I'm so sorry about not posting the last few days. I am under the weather. As soon as I am able to hold on to more than a glass of water, I'll be back. In the meantime, please see the video below. Maybe a few bucks spent on some lessons might have helped.
Yesterday, after work, the kids and I went back to the Harley dealership to pick up the Sportster. Dave, who was in my motorcycle class, just happened to be the person who got the bike ready for pick up. He made it shine. I apologize for the photos. I have no picture taking talent.
After supper, while the kids were getting ready for bed, I took her out for a quick spin through my neighbourhood. She is so much more responsive in the lower gears and much, much lighter than big boy. Two hundred pounds makes all of the difference. I am so much more confident riding this bike. Little girl has come home!
And now, I've officially become one of THOSE people who talk about their motorized vehicles like they live and breathe. But they do, don't they? I haven't named her... yet (does "Little Girl" count?), so I suppose my metamorphosis into a total motorhead is not fully realized.
The kids are with their dad this weekend. Guess what I'm going to be doing?
Live to ride, baby.
I have known for quite some time that I am really not girlfriend material. I just can't seem to get too excited about the prospect of being committed, except perhaps to an asylum.
You see, the trouble begins with my inability to pick appropriate men. I look back on the serious romantic relationships in my life and they look like something out of a poorly acted soap opera.
The first boy I ever loved with a heart old enough to purchase alcohol was this tall, dark, wild child from Indiana. He had moved up to Canada for the summer to play AAA baseball. He was a year younger than me, drove a Mustang and he could throw a 91 mile an hour fastball. We met by accident when he fell through the evergreen hedges into my back yard. We had the best summer as only two young twenty-somethings can but we always knew that he would go home to Indiana. We tried to do the long distance thing for a while and he was so decent about answering his phone even though I called like a total lunatic a bazillion times a day. However, on some level, I knew that I would never have to commit to this man because he LIVED IN ANOTHER COUNTRY! We are still good friends and I have already purchased the most insulting 40th birthday card I could find for him.
Then came the Honda CBR boy. He dropped into my life at a party. He was 6'5", dark haired and brooding. I mistook the quiet, unsmiling persona as mysterious and Marlon Brando-like. Wrong. He was just plain miserable. And gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that.....except that he asked me to marry him and I DID. Call me crazy but when a man asks a woman to walk down the aisle, the woman doesn't think to inquire if he might bat for the other team. Looking back, it was clear that on some level, I had to have known. After all, if it waddles, quacks and accessorizes better than me, it's a duck.
After that kick to my fragile feminine ego, I went out and found the biggest, most masculine, most Neanderthal-like man on the planet. If you looked sideways at him when he wasn't watching, you might have been able to catch his knuckles brushing the ground. Everything was a-ok as long as I was content playing cave woman. I fell hard and it was so easy because he was married to someone else at the time. We were still great friends, though. We'd have lunch and talk about everything under the sun using very. simple. words. He'd complain about his wife (red flag) and I commiserated because EVERYONE knows that the wife is the problem, right? I thought he was the second coming and I pined for him from afar.
Then, he did the unthinkable and left his wife. To compound the horror, he confessed that he was in love with me and wanted to pursue a relationship (danger sign, danger sign). I felt tremendous guilt along the lines of "be careful what you ask for...", so I married him, of course. Because nothing screams validation like being the new, much younger wife of a man in the throes of mid-life crisis. He is the father of my children.
I lasted a decade with him until one morning, I woke up and seriously contemplated the physics that would be necessary to smother him to death. You think that I am kidding...
Dallas is sweet and I have no regrets but he's still licking some pretty serious wounds. We have arrived at a comfortable place, though. I have a friend in another town who I dated for a few weeks and who treated me like a queen so naturally, I sprinted away from him. We're still friends, too. Something has changed, though because I have been asked out more often in the last two months than the last four years. Grocery store, line at the dry cleaners, Harley dealership, neighbour, etc. have all resulted in perfect strangers asking to exchange digits.
For instance, the other day I was at the hand car wash cleaning my vehicle to get it ready for trade in. I had my iPod on and I walked over to the vending machine to get some Turtle wax wipes (I like wipes-all kinds of wipes). I turned around and this guy started to make small talk about the bill changer and did I have any left over coins I might want to sell him. When I told him I had used my debit card, that launched a whole other discussion which ended with, "Gee. Your boyfriend? (pause while he waited for a confirm or deny which never came) is a lucky guy to be able to stay at home watching football while you're out washing the car." Big, bad, obvious fish for info but I just didn't feel like pursuing it so I smiled and went back to my car.
Well, I'm back out there again. I still do not trust my judgment because my track record is beyond pathetic. While I'm confident that my gaydar is now finely tuned, I'm not so sure about my ability to discern any other characteristic. One thing I do know for certain is that men must find commitment-phobes to be irresistible because my dance card is full.
Yesterday, I walked into work like it was any other day. I dropped the kids off with Laura (we carpool) and had the music jacked on my way in. There is nothing like a little "Jet" to start the day off right and after the heavy breather at the crack of dawn, I needed music that didn't require effort to appreciate.
I usually arrive to work somewhere around 7:15 am and I absolutely love this time to myself. I plunk down at my desk, plug in my laptop, plug in my iPod, answer email and plan my day for the next thirty minutes. I have a travel mug full of hot, perfectly brewed, Tim Horton's coffee and sometimes, if email is light, I get the chance to skim my blogroll. It is the most peace one can get outside of the bathroom.
Today, Michael came in early, which was out of the ordinary. This was his first day back from a week long holiday at the beach. He and his wife, Laura are close friends of mine and they generously took my son on vacation with them. Our boys are very tight and our daughters have been best friends since they were in diapers. I love these people.
I started to give Michael a hard time about something and he ambled down the hallway telling me to come to his office to discuss. I walked in and he was clearly preoccupied. I started teasing him about how his office looks like crap and how he ought to get a lamp or a plant or a PULSE to warm it up. He replied,
"It doesn't matter, now. I got called up this weekend." I looked at him, not comprehending what he was telling me.
"Wha...what?"
"I got my orders. I have to report for duty October 1st."
Michael is National Guard Reserve. We've all been dodging the inevitability of this day for the past five years. The shock of hearing him say it out loud surprised me. I felt my eyes start to fill and I excused myself so I wouldn't embarrass either one of us. I also recognized the first, unconscious stirrings of unadulterated, it's-not-fair rage and decided that expressing those emotions wouldn't do anyone any good.
When I got myself composed, we talked through it. Later, I watched as he walked to the president's office to break the news. He was remarkably stoic. I couldn't seem to shake the sick feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't fear or apprehension though. It was this mismash of non specific ick.
Just before leaving for the day, I walked out into our hallway and I could hear Michael tap, tap, tapping his pencil on his desk. He was on the phone when suddenly, he broke out into his trademark laugh which is infectious, loud and genuine. It was then that I finally understood. That unidentified thing I was feeling was sadness.
I'm going to miss him.
Terribly.
I woke up this morning to the sick wail that is my alarm clock. I've had the thing for years and when I first bought it, the Timex "Indiglo" was all the rage. I could look over in the middle of the night as a new mother and get a clear reading of how sleep deprived I really was.
The clock hums and I quickly became used to the sound and the flourescent green blue colour that was projected from the face. I remember my ex husband barking at me to cover the damn thing up because the light ostensibly kept him awake.
Oh, please.
The only thing that kept him awake was sex and since that wasn't a prolonged affair, he always managed to get his 10 hours a night.
Anyway, this morning when the alarm went off, it sounded funky. Instead of that sharp, set your teeth on edge blare that I've grown to loathe with a fury, I got this weak beep, beep, beep that sounded like a car door alarm going off....in Vietnam. It was a whisper. I hit snooze but didn't really have to because I probably could have slept through it just fine. The trouble was that I perceived this other sound and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
At first, I thought it must be my sleep haze and I was just listening to the rise and fall of my own chest. Then, I held my breath and the sound was still there. Someone or something was breathing loudly, rhythmically and RIGHT OUTSIDE OF MY OPEN WINDOW. Do you remember as a kid irrationally being frightened to get out of your bed for fear that a hand would shoot out from underneath the dust ruffle and grab you like Carrie?
Umm...that was me this morning. I was terrified. I tried talking myself out of the panic. My internal dialogue usually works like a charm with scary things like wicked turbulence over the Pacific in the dead of night. I just imagine the plane bathed in a pure white light of protection (as suggested by Birkenstock wearing mother) and soon, I'm focused on happy thoughts instead of assuming the crash position. Well, none of it was working at 4:30 am. I turned ever so slightly and looked out of the window. The whole side of my house was shrouded in fog.
Of course.
Because apparently, it's not spooky enough that there was an unidentified species respirating under my window like Michael from Hallowe'en in the fricking face mask. Jesus.
I lay there nearly paralyzed, hating myself for being such a goober. Meanwhile, my wheezy old alarm clock hummed through the last few seconds of my nine minute snooze and then positively SHRIEKED. Every organ in my body plunged right to my bowel. I flew off the mattress and quickly realized my ankles were vulnerable to an under bed attack so I sprinted to my bathroom, threw on the light and caught a glimpse of my wild-eyed, panicked, whack-a-do, self in the mirror. And then, I giggled because let's face it, I'm a nutter.
Even though I could still feel my heart pounding in my ears, I put on a pair of sweats and wandered over to the window.
The breathing sound was gone.
Creepy.
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