Coming up: Beware the Larbs of Gai! Benightedly empowered to seek novel lands and spices, our couple get caught at the border of Thai food, incarcerated and frozen without due process or comprehension. Will they survive the Supon strike? Will the sofa ever be seen again, or has it been unwitting collateral damage in this explosion of Thai-ranny?? The Biblical biking schism is upon us. With the gods of the mountain withstand our hero's heresies yet another year? Will punishment ensue? Will rides really be any less structured? Adella's arch defies ultrasound and goes to meet its molder with stirring credit-rolling strings. Will the massage assassin thwart victory? Will she run or hobble? Investment season begins. Will Adella's rainbow pooping flying pony bring dividends? Will Prince Florimund ride again?
Crunch some coldish curries, check your luggage before customs, and get out your checkbooks to see the answers to these pressing queries and more!!
The Training Bible is Dead (Mostly) Mostly Dead is still slightly alive.
Yesterday evening was promising to be a late one. Now that Screwpocalypse (the family friendly edition) has once more abated into a series of miniature projects and lag-times, the bike-and-chain had reseeded our google calendars with his typically insane slew of training rides. According to The Bible, last night was to be a "Z2 R" (not, ZZTop ride, which is how I wanted to read it). I couldn't say what that exactly entailed, but I knew enough to grok that this meant an hour and a half on the trainer in our living room. I knew this partially because I'm an unslakably curious kitty, and because it was pertinent to my timing of the whole husband-dinner thing (if dinner lags much beyond 7, then we're not eating together, because my stomach is neither a fan of either waiting that long nor having a huge meal before bed).
The boyfrianceband arrived home just past 6:30, beginning the inner whir of internal uxorial calculations (fifteen minutes to get on the bike, an hour and a half on the bike, another ten to get off and be ready for dinner..). Estimating that he would not be available for fine dining until at least 8:30 (not so far away from when we bridge into Adella's bedtime territory), I minced no words and did all in my power to limit distractions between man and bike. But of course it takes a while to get set up for a ride, and, as predicted, he did not start his ride until 6:45 or so. I donned my earplugs, and began his food on general principle of not wanting to remain downstairs the whole evening. While things were simmering, I quivered on the stairs with my book until quite abruptly: silence. Graduating degrees of silence. First the roar of the trainer cut mute. As there are often little mechanical problems that require a pause, I paid no heed... until the fan went off. At only 7:10!
At this point, I debouched from my hiding place with eyebrows aflutter endued in question marks (did I perhaps misread the schedule? Were we slated for a ride so fast that it travelled backwards in time?) Instead I saw Andrew casting off some piece of cycling equipment like a man rolling up his sleeves for sotten bar brawl, and bellowing "forget this!" He then smiled ever so mordantly and proclaimed the death of the structured training plan.
Dinner was had about twenty minutes anon, during which time the further context emerged.
As background, The Training Bible and a highly structured training plan has been an eidolon of cycling supremacy in our lives for at least a few years. Every year, Andrew starts anew through his series of base-build-peak and puffery. Every year, something - let's call it life - sufficiently intervenes. And usually just around the springtime, though actual positioning relative to the vernal equinox may vary, Andrew calls it quits, only to begin again the next year with self-promises that this year he'll follow it and just not worry about missing a workout here or there. But first, there will be a period of grandiloquent oration on the defects of a structured plan, the stress of cramming it into a schedule, the sheer otiosity of it all. Eventually there will be some abridged form of peak and rest cycles. And, should the season not quite pan out, there will be a subsequent lachrymosity that life once again intervened and stymied the perfect training plan. First it was medical problems. Then school. Then wedding and new job nonsense. This year, I suspect the culprit to be singled out will be the commute and the particularly vexing screwpocalypse overtime explosion.
While we've been here before and likely will begin again, it's a relieving point of the year. Attempting to meet the stringent confines of an increasingly tenebrous plan is inherently intrusive and stressful. And no matter how many promises one makes to oneself that this time you'll not sweat a lost week here or there, trying to "follow" a plan piecemeal is almost more exhausting than trying to fit it all in to-the-letter.
And of course, although familiar territory, there will again be time for mourning and brooding. The boyfrianceband has a mechanically engineered mind, inclined towards these fits of intense obsession. He is generally a maundering, merry, and mischievous interlocutor, full of desultory bric-a-brac and a wide range of timbres. But when something comes before his focus in just the right light, it becomes his personal Aleph, the point containing and consuming all other points. That Aleph may be a single stress factor on a machine, a bike part, the allocation of loan payment to savings to retirement equation suddenly cooking up in his head, what rain jacket he'd like to order, whether to buy the cheaper or slightly more expensive cycling shoes...
Whatever object of brooding instantly burgeons its own black hole, threatening not only to implode his consciousness within its infinite nothing, but to draw the rest of his surroundings into that same crushing oblivion. Fearing for my own consumption by bike-part (or whatever), I have three approaches to this occasional vortex: (1) full on facilitative discussion to unravel the issue and at least get some sense of solutions, (2) distraction, (3) fleeing the room.
The first is my instinctive choice if it's a new obsession. I'm a solicitous person, but my curiosity does seem to help people articulate things and sort stuff out.
The second kind of involves bringing out the conversational jaws of life and trying to extract my sweetie before its too late for us all. That might be the inelegant irreverent palaver meant to get a laugh, unstick the mind, and find a mutual topic of amusement. It might also be the begrudging volunteering of my own personal information. Begrudging because I am connaturally consumed by an aversion to speaking about myself when another has not shown specific and sincere interest; but, as I've previously determined, the bike-and-chain lacks a natural curiosity or emotional creativity to necessarily think of these questions on his own and it's part of the whole marital vows to at least give him the option of remembering my life is interesting. Often both of these drawing-out tactics work to some extent.
Sometimes, the obsession is in full thrall and there is nothing to be done but to extract myself and wait it out with my book. I try not to default to this position (despite some other innate tendencies), since I think too much withdrawing could slip-a-slope into those separate lives and silence that toll the death knells of a good relationship, but sometimes space is lovely for all involved.
At any rate, it has been decided(-ish, there will still be lamentations, justifications, and furlough-long stairs over coffee steam) that the regular schedule Andrew had been following before starting his super-build-a-bear-lightening-round-base-twenty phase was a nice balance between work, personal, and training lives. And that he will still do track, at least for the pre-season. Further, given the timing, he can abbreviate the training schedule to still include the highlights of peak and rest weeks going into the pre-season racing. So, he's still on a pretty regular calendar. He will be still doing some race-focused trainings. And he will take some prescribed rest-weeks. But the training calendar proper is "dead." As I understand it.
I do appreciate the potential for predictability inherent in this schism. Knowing that Thursday is a "ride after work" day every week, and that other days will be set in solidity as well, makes it a lot easier to plan my life and our mutual use of the house. And I'm sure the bereavement Mr. (W)right feels as he breaks up with his training schedule will pass in a series of invectives and recriminations that mellow into a plangent acceptance.
In my far less biblical "training" routine, I have reached a nominal milestone in physiotherapy. Yesterday was the first appointment in which she didn't think I needed an ultrasound afterwards, and the duration between visits has been pushed back to a monthly interval. Ambitious to undermine all that progress (because standing one-footed on a half ball with your eyes closed while singing I'm a Little Tea Pot counts as a victory celebration in PT land), I bumped up my run-walk to fifteen minutes of running interrupted by a single minute after the initial eight minutes.
I'm really hoping to get to a point of straight running. Even if it's a short period of running, it's a huge paradigmatic shift. I'm a little nervous that might have overdone the progress, especially after my massage assassin was gripped with messianic afflatus to go after my feet like a dervish yesterday afternoon. So far, so good, but I'm watching and am ready to stay off my feet today if necessary for healing, or to push back my run tomorrow.
And whatever else may come, waking up (at ungodly early hours) to a sunshiney day and genuine-chirpy birds who have now gotten the jump on my chirping alarm clock makes it hard not to remain hopeful!
Happy dromedary day! May your feet skip lightly atop the dewy daisy petals!
Soupon... Soupoff Thairrany Over Date Night(mare)
Thai food is a ubiquitous indulgence most everywhere these days. Little Thai places pullulate with prevalence throughout the alleys and avenues of any downtown area and nestle cozily in any strip mall worth its salt. In the U-district and on Capitol Hill, the boytoy and I had an olio of Thai options. I had a particular soft spot for Araya's Vegan Thai place, seeing as they (1) had a buffet, (2) where I could eat absolutely everything without the long, involved, and awkward interchanges about various fish and shrimp and other maritime additions that may or may not be listed under the "vegetarian" banner. And of course, the erstwhile Jup Jup Jup, on Cap Hill, which had a behemoth of a salad with roughly two full avocadoes, two apples, a treeful of walnuts, and some tasty crunchy greens.
Bellingham seems to have its own plethora, but for some reason, we've fallen into a decided Thai-rut. Sure, there's some variety on whether we attend the Barkley On Rice or the Sehome On Rice, but there's a pretty concerted On Rice theme. There's a great place, Thai House, by the mall, but it seems out of the way to me. There's Busara's, but it is always so slammed that the wait times are glacial during anything approximating a normal business time. There's Poor Siamese, but the location is a little awkward, and I've seen more than a few reviews of the less lustrous kind since the original chef trucked herself off to Ferndale. And there's Supon's.
Technically Supon's should be an appealing alternative. I used to go there (that physical location) when it was Lemongrass, one of my favorite Thai restaurants ten years back. It is even closer to our home than On Rice. Judging by yesterday's survey, it operates at < 10% restaurant capacity. The seating and decor are still all the slightly nicer form of pleasant strip-mall-luxe that Lemongrass brought in years back. And they do offer a side of steamed veggies and brown rice (my safe go-to at any Thai restaurant).
Since it was date night and the thawing point of that olio of recent stressors in our lovely lives, I thought perhaps we ought to further our commitment to trying new things together with a toe in the tepid tides of novelty. So, yes, I suggested we go to SUPON'S. Actually I first suggested Busara's but it was, again, packed to the gills and I fled instinctively without even checking to see if they'd brought out the dreaded wait-list sign in book yet. .
As soon as we reached Supon's I had a similar visceral panic and nearly did flee to the welcoming and reliable arms of One Rice. It was quiet. Eerily still. But the dearth of people included a dearth of attending waitstaff. There was one girl moving 'twixt kitchen and table at a celerous pace, but she made no eye contact and little gesture to assure us that our compliance with the "Please wait and our server will seat you shortly" fiat at the door would be rewarded. After about five minutes, she pitched in our direction and pointed us to a table before flitting off again. Five minutes was not terrifically long, but I was getting a sinking feeling about this whole experimentation thing; admittedly that feeling probably had more to do with the gripping mini-migraine aura budding from a fertile manure of allergies, looby lady orange barracuda pills, the concentration headache of wading through Thomas Pynchon's CPS Files (implicating and investigating cross reports for a multigenerational family span that included step-families, half-siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents of all varieties and several social workers and detectives) and a general tiredness not otherwise specified.
We were not so promptly directed to a table nearest us, which was also nearest the door. This was not horrible, except that there was a bit of a breeze outside, so every time the door opened, we were blasted with gelid air. And the blasts happened just often enough to leave my Raynaud's tooshy slightly bluish by the end of the evening. It took roughly fifteen minutes to get a menu, a half hour to put in our order, and an hour and fifteen minutes to get our food. I wouldn't necessarily mind being cold, unattended, and foodless for a long period of time, but last night made us both appreciate our sweet sofa more than words can say. After about forty-five minutes, I was just out of brainpower to work through the migraine malaise and impatience, so the conversation petered. Rallying against all outrageous fortunes and their nippy little arrow tips, I grabbed a Cascadia Weekly to kibbitz over with the boy. Good call, Supon's, including some reading material. We found the new pot dispensary adds quite entertaining in their ongoing preference for abstruse euphemisms, and learned there's such a thing as Forrest yoga.
The waitress did acknowledge at some point that she knew we'd been waiting a while, so I can assume this is not typical. I can also only guess that they were somehow short staffed that evening. Still I recall having been to Supon's when it was in the location of the Poor Siamese, and having a similar endless waiting game experience. A short review of Yelp reveals that we are not the only couple to have been caught in the Supon's time-trap. To add to the "meh" my vegetables were cold. And while the prices were technically on par with On Rice, they charged $2.50 extra for rice and served smaller portions. So, it may have been a poor sampling, but I think I'm back to Busara's if it's totally off-hours, Thai House if we're already around the mall and wanting Thai. And the endless spicy variety of "either Barkley or Samish On Rice" of course.
When we got home at 8 o'clock, there was an accelerated deep bonding with the sofa for a comfortable spell before I finally gave in to my screaming desire to kick on the battery operated slippers and regenerate feeling in my feet. And then we signed our new lease (on life or at least on life-without-moving-and-all-those-hassles). Which, well, definitely made it a winning end to a mixed evening.
Did I mention I really love our sofa?
Home Sweet Home The Un-thai-ing of Date Night:
After our Wednesday culinary misfire, I admit to having a pretty clingy relationship with home yesterday. Not that I skipped work or anything, but I did fuss before going to work, of course (it's not a weekday without somebody having to pry my white knuckles from the door frame at 6 a.m.), and latched on with infantile hugs and gurgles upon my evening return. Perhaps Andrew felt the same. Or perhaps he's back in his carpool and this tends to result in his returning home a touch earlier. Either way, we were both solidly committed to being home together yesterday evening.
And it was a thoroughly ameliorating follow up. We dined, we snuggled, we sofa-surfed, we watched Agent Cooper finally track down Bob and bring Laura Palmer's sad story to a (sort of) close, we split into parallel "play" as I tangoed with a crossword and Andrew lambadaed with some retirement account forms.
The bike-and-chain is officially eligible for the company's 401K program as of May 1. Retirement! I'm sure we'll be filthy rich and retired in a matter of
But yes, IRA money. It never really was mine to begin with and as they say, if you love something set it free. I don't know that I love whatever bit of my paycheck I siphon out of possession before I've even glimpsed it, and I don't know that tying it into an IRA really counts as free.. but maybe?
My account is in something called a Trak fund, a Morgan Stanley conceit that allows me to fill out an okcupid style survey (except more boring - like they couldn't call Trak 7 "The Naughty Nurse" or Trak 10 "The Manic Manchild" - and with fewer pictures or polyamorous suitors), be placed into a risk profile and then matched with one of 11 Traks that best suit my stated goals and documented resources. The great thing about the Trak is that the whole package is heavily managed (which I know because my financial planner explains all the quarterly meetings and activities to me on a regular basis, and I'm notified of activity about once every twenty seconds via email or mail or both). I am not claiming it's the best option, but for somebody with a piss-poor emotional core for financial trading and decisions, it's a relief to have it handled (by reports and comparisons, fairly well) by somebody I trust. Really, since the money doesn't exist, I don't even confidently say they're doing much of any use in all that managing. It appears they are, and by the power of that pony-conjuring magical thinking alone they certainly care enough to be doing pretty well. Mostly it's just having somebody care. That's nice. Like when you go to a diner at 8:00 p.m. to have a nice maternal waitress call you hon' and treat you gently after a tough day.
Andrew will get a little more latitude with his future-retirement monies. Last night he set out to choose which mutual funds and/or stocks into which to cast his 401K monies. There was much googling and many notes. I don't know that there's a final answer. The uncertainty of it all (did something do better over five years for a reason that predicts it will continue to do so?) While blood curtling to me, I suspect it's at least a halfway fun research project for the man. Although I'm not sure it can compare with price-checking several complicated options for addressing a single bike-issue. I'll keep to scrubbing CPS files, doctor's notes, and byzantine statutes for my cerebral canter.
But enough of that, back to the grindstone. I shall make the sharpest of ferrous tools today and use a self-manufactured machete to cut through red tape! Because people with magical flying ponies far prefer pink sparkly duct tape, thank you very much! The red would just clash.
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