I’ve been having some difficulty settling into a routine.  I’ve been trying, in these pages, to mostly talk about my cycling life, but in reality, I do lots of other things.  I have two children–my son is nearly 13, and my daughter is 9.  I spend a lot of time being Mom–carpooling, supervising homework, making lunches–all the normal Mom stuff.  I help with my son’s cross-country team (which ends this week).  I love running with the kids, but it does wreak havoc on my schedule for the first quarter of the school year.  And I try to drive on field trips periodically, because it seems to matter to my children. 

I’m also, in theory at least, a writer.  I’m working on my first novel; I have a complete draft, but it still needs a lot of work.  Unfortunately, most days it gets shoved to the bottom of the to-do list, and as a result, it’s been moldering for an embarrassing number of months now.  Must get back to it . . .

I love to cook, and eat, and buy groceries, and read cookbooks (seriously–cover to cover), and plan menus, and just generally obsess over food.  It’s a huge part of my life.  I’m currently reading Heat by Bill Buford.  Fabulous book.  Much of it takes place in the kitchen of the restaurant Babbo, in New York, which I ate in once about two years ago (right after I ran the New York Marathon–that was a bad day, but that’s another story).  Great restaurant; fascinating book.

I love to garden.  I’m not very good at it, but I have ideas in my head about how our yard should look.  They don’t always match my husband’s ideas, and the reality rarely matches my ideas, but I do enjoy dabbling.  Unfortunately, it’s just that–dabbling.  As a result, our yard is usually half-overrun with weeds, the mosquitoes are horrible, and there are bald spots in the grass where the children have scuffed out homeplate and bases.  But it’s September, and I have a pile of bulb catalogs next to the bed.  I need to order some things, because it’s that time of year.  I’m going to get around to that real soon.

And I’m currently painting our house.  I decided about a year ago that it was time to act like I’m here to stay.  We bought this house in the spring of 1995.  I’m not much of a decorator, and I’ve been busy for the last ten years, so I managed to just sort of live in the house, without really paying much attention to it, for a very long time.  But I realized that I don’t really like maroon and green wallpaper, or builder beige paint.  So I started stripping wallpaper, and then painting, and what started as a little freshen-up has turned into a major overhaul.  And it’s taking FOREVER.  The dining room is violet, the library is apricot, the living room is yellow, the hall is turquoise–definitely no more beige.  At the moment, there is a large Gorilla ladder on the front stairs, which has been there for several weeks now.  I’m trying to finish those stairs this week, so that I can move to the back stairs, and then I will officially be finished with the downstairs.  Halfway.  How alarming that I still have half to do!

Anyway, all of that is just to say that when it seems like I don’t ride regularly enough (which I know I don’t at this point), it’s because I’m doing all those other things.  The beginning of the school year is particularly tricky, what with the need for new routines and schedules and all.  But it’s time now–I need to get settled and organized.

So tomorrow I’m taking the car to be serviced, and I’ll wedge in a ride while they work on it, then I’ll go to cross-country.  There–I’m feeling more settled already.  Really.