Mar 13 2009
This one goes to eleven
It’s my 11 year anniversary since moving out here. Loaded up the Civic, pointed the car west and just drove until I got here. Considering I’d never been out here and that (looking back now) I relied heavily on my parents, it was a big move. A lot of things popped up after I moved that could have easily derailed me and sent me back east. I’m obviously glad I stayed so I try to recignize it each year.
Feels like a month of Sundays since I was here last. Vacation. Joining Crackbook. Birthdays. Family Illnesses. Tax season. A little stress from Rachel’s work (mortgage industry…which currently is in shambles). And the general chaos that goes with a 5 and 8 year old.
Spent a week in Hawaii in mid February. We made a concerted effort not to ‘do’ anything. Our daily schedule was as follows:
- get up whenever,
- drink coffee on the veranda,
- go the beach to read/ swim/ snorkel/ make sand castles,
- have lunch,
- make a pitcher of rum punch/mojitos,
- go to the pool until dinner,
- eat dinner
- read a bit until bedtime
That was basically about it. Pretty rough. The post-vacation bump didn’t last that long as we got back to the grind fairly quickly.
Rachel is an appraiser and is finding herself between a rock and a hard place in terms of doing work. I think it was Greenspan who coined the term “Irrational Exuberance”. I believe a new term is afflicting mortgage brokers and underwriters – “Irrational Retardedness”. Seriously. Everyone is losing it.
The homeowners are pissed becasue their house isn’t appreciating at the 20% it was 2 years ago. In many areas, the value is down. The lenders are stressed because the low interest rates has everyone going in for a refi. The underwriters are freaking out because the loans their lenders approved are getting more and more difficult to sell. And the appraisers are panicking because the underwriters keep coming back for more information, particularly nearby supporting house sales (which there aren’t any).
It’ll all settle out eventually but basically they good times from the early 00’s are so over.
Rach and I have 3 grandparents left; one for me, and two for her. Once of hers, on her Dad’s side, fell and broke her hip a few years back and has been deteriorating since. We learned after we got back from Hawaii that her kidneys are failing. So a couple weeks ago we brought the kids by essentially for one last visit. That wasn’t very pleasant. Then my grandmother, on my mom’s side, is also aging. She’s had some heart problems pop up over the past couple months which has my mom up there as a psuedo live-in nurse. At 65, my mom’s no spring chicken. I can tell it’s wearing her down pretty hard.
It’s tax time too. With her self-employed business and our new rental house, I’m up to my ass in receipts, bills, statements, and records.
It’s all relatively under control but I realize now that I’m always doing ’something’ from the minute I get up to when I go to bed. I think if all of this happened last fall during cross season, I’d have cracked.
Luckily, training hasn’t really ramped up hard yet. I’m just about to start mid-base work next week. Up until now, I’ve been keeping a fairly steady 6-8 hour a week pace of endurance/tempo work. ‘Solid’ is a good way to describe how I feel now. ‘Fast’ is not. I’m in no shape to go fast right now but I’m in great shape to start training to go fast. I’m more optimistic about the start of this season than last.
Hornings is coming up fairly soon. Last year I raced that a day after I had a 24 hour stomach bug. I don’t ever, ever, ever, ever want to do that again. Plus it was a slopfest. I could have possibly enjoyed it but I was incredibly tired and irritable. Probably the stomach bug talking though.
Anyway, then there’s mudslinger, bear springs trap, and chainbreaker, which I’ll pass on. A race on Mother’s Day? Really? Mmmm, I think I like being married better than racing.
Hopefully with cycling ramping up and perhaps other things settling down, I can return to more normal postings. We’ll see.