all bowls should be made of bread

the boys in their basket

yesterday my big plan was to lay around the house and read, and take naps.  pretty ambitious for a saturday, i admit, but i was feeling pretty good about it.  then my mom called and invited the girlchild and i out to lunch with my aunt and nephew! so i got dressed, we went to anacortes, and had a lovely lunch at anthony's.  not to put too fine a point on it: but i don't know of any better way to eat clam chowder than out of a sourdough bread bowl.  my nephew ate his body weight in tartar sauce, and we all had a lovely time. 

today i'm feeling a little more motivated, and might do laundry and some sewing.  i also got a new bike! i want to take her out for a spin as well.  the boychik has a friend who is moving, and was selling her bike.  he bought it, thinking he would clean it up and sell it on craigslist, but it fit me and i talked him out of it.  hooray!  it's red, it has gears (i haven't had a bike with gears since high school, and even then i had no idea what to do with them), and is just the right size.  since my bike was stolen a few years ago, i've missed riding around after work.  i might even take to riding to work a day or two a week, to save on gas and such. (although to be honest, that makes me kind of anxious because i have to cross a busy highway and am convinced that i will get smooshed.) 

a few hippie things

• we're going to give up buying paper towels. yes, they are handy and useful and all that, but they are also wasteful and expensive. there is no shortage of kitchen towels in this house, and so we're going to start using them more.
• there has been talk lately about us becoming a one car family. this scares the shit out of me for a few reasons, but the idea of spending less on gas, insurance and maintenance is pretty compelling. we could also use the small amount of money we got from selling one of the cars for savings and to get us out of some debt. nothing is set in stone yet, but it feels good to consider our options.
• D got some books about making his own awesome bikes, a lá atomic zombie, and now all we can talk about are making recumbent, low-rider, chopper bikes. (and trikes! i want a trike for shopping.)
• as always, we're trying to cut back on tv as well. i know, "why don't you just cancel the cable?" honestly? sometimes i really like watching tv. i have a few shows i really dig, and i like being able to knit/embroider/veg in front of the box on occasion. i guess i'm just trying to keep it all in moderation, and so far it's going okay.
  

bike weirdness

i tried to embed a map of my ride so you can see where i go; i do get to spend a lot of time by the ocean and cross an awesome bridge (where you can see seals!), but now that's in there i can't edit the html. it messed something up. i'm confused. i don't want to delete the post, but the map is too big and weird. um, maybe no more embedding from mapmyride.com.

bike madness

on today's ride i saw two seals, one heron, a pair of ducks, and many, many wild bunnies.

i'm going to take those all as a good sign.

p.s. mapmyride says i went 8 miles! whew. what i also saw on my ride, but am going to dismiss in the face of all those good things, was a group of douchebags walking their six dogs side by side, taking up the whole trail. then they had the gall to get fussy with me for not warning them i was coming sooner. like i would ever try to scare their delicate doggies!

endless possibilities

i know i've talked about it a lot lately, but i really do love my bike. tonight i took what mapmyride says was a 7 mile ride, but i think it might have been shorter. six miles is what it felt like, anyhow. it was a beautiful evening, sunny and warm and by the time the sun set i was hot and welcomed the cool air. it feels weird that i ride a bike sometimes; a few months ago i would have never thought "oh yeah, i'm going to go home and take a five mile bike ride." five miles seemed like a lot in the beginning, especially considering i am not in the best of shape. what makes riding my bike different from other "exercise" is that it's fun. you get to see all sort of neat stuff, you can go slow or fast, it's hard without being ridiculously hard. i guess a better way to put it is that it's hard but with awesome perks. the more i ride, the easier it gets, too. in a short amount of time i think i've gotten stronger and better at riding, which is saying something because i am a lazy girl and i ride a one-speed bike. being outside by myself is also cool.

a few perks from today's ride:

• seeing random kittens down by the waterfront. i bet they are boatyard mousers!
• lots of cute dogs being walked.
  
• big black cows hanging out.
  
• many, many wild bunnies.
• i'm pretty sure i saw a heron, which i feel like is my lucky bird. i know that's weird, but i always feel a lot luckier after i see one. i'm sure it's just some weird superstition, a little magical thinking on my part, but herons tend to show up when i feel lousy and they make me feel better.
  
• i cannot tell you how much i love the smell of salt air. campfires are a close second, with campfires on the beach being basically the best smell on earth. the holy trifecta adds cooking meat or marshmallows. that's a scent that should be bottled and then applied liberally.
  

my parent's got home from their vacation tonight. baby was insane with glee. you could hear her popping up all over, yelling "grammy! pop pop!" and giggling like crazy. she crawled up on mom while i was talking to her and i hear her say, "maggie love grammy." it nearly killed me. i mean, maggie loves me, i know, but she doesn't love anyone the way she loves her grammy. i think i'm third or fourth on her list, which is still top five and fine by me! it was awesome to talk to my folks, their vacation plans this time were very "we'll see what happens" so i never knew where they were or when they were coming back. fun for them, annoying for the rest of us. i think they had fun, i'll find out for sure next week.