Diet Makeover - Green Fruit Smoothies

Green Fruit Smoothies. They’re all the rage and there’s a reason why: They’re fantastic. Why have we waited so long to start drinking them and using high-powered blenders to do so?

We are now consuming 2 cups of spinach, a handful of kale, 2 cups of peaches, 1 cup of pineapple and two bananas a day.

It’s a bona fide diet makeover. Our bodies are happy. We are happy. The guilt is gone. They are delicious. And, bonus, there are great side effects:

The checkout line

Do you know how good it feels to check out with four pineapples at once? You can’t help humming to yourself, waiting for the world to notice the amount of goodness on sale 2/$4 this week. Especially if you’ve spent the last five years at one store in particular buying bag after bag of chocolate. The checkout ladies try to hide their surprise; you’re dying for them to comment on it.

The guy ahead of you

You explode with pride when the guy ahead of you checks out with just a brown, waxy pastry bag. When the cashier asks, “How many?” he replies, “Two fat pills.” You giggle. Of course you can. Your own bag of fat pills is being smashed by four rolling gargantuan tropical fruits with thorny points sloughing off on the conveyor belt.

Note: Drinking smoothies has not stopped us from eating sugar, frosting, cookies or donuts. It has, however, alleviated our guilt of doing so.

The freezer section

Have you seen the “Farm to Freezer” fruit at Tom’s Food Markets? Fresh sliced peaches from Smeltzer Orchard Company in Benzonia, flash frozen in time just for us! Buying peaches feels great. But buying local peaches with a label dated by a human hand with a Sharpie marker? You feel like you grew them yourself.

The greens

You find yourself marking out a few goals. Can you eat two bins of this organic stuff before it turns into wet, lacy slop? Can you fill your blender until you regret it? Can you stomach a handful of kale drowned in fruit? How about two handfuls? (Answer: no) It’s a glorious feeling to eat triple-washed spinach by 8 a.m. seven days a week.

The prep

Line up four of those fancy SpongeBob things on your counter and you’ll finally use that Ginsu knife you got last Christmas. You feel like Barefoot Contessa.

You are slicing and dicing when you hear one of the children exclaim, “You got four of them?” You almost shout in response but, when you turn, you see they are looking at something else, the 4 bags of chocolate chips you also bought. You go back to your work because it feels good and right, and those chips feel very, very wrong.

Enjoy the slice of the knife as it sections the yellow fruit. The pineapple juice will flow off the cutting board and onto the counter and, eventually, down the front of it. Curse it, even as you rejoice in its existence. For you have cleaned many, many drips of ice cream and this, this is long awaited.

The straw

Every straw you’ve used in adulthood has been one of three:

1. A Burger King straw. You’ve just consumed a Whopper. A Double Whopper. Regret is heavy and so are you.

2. A milkshake straw. Good God, you’ve just had the world’s best chocolate shake at Don’s Drive-In. There is no regret. Life is short. We give an all-out pass to ice cream. Always.

3. A mixed drink straw. The perfect conduit and stirrer of vodka over ice. It is tiny and thin, trying to stop you. But you persist, never a quitter. This straw holds a place of honor as it is always the first step to very fun bad decisions.

Finally, we have No. 4: The smoothie straw, the world’s first guilt-free straw. They come in neon yellow, bright pink and life-affirming spinach green. With these straws, you are responsible and pure. No wasted calories or surprise hangovers. And when a wedge of kale gets stuck in them, it’s satisfying. The nutrition is so huge that it can’t fit.

So there it is, the biggest diet makeover ever to happen to the chocolate-chip-loving twins. It’s a great start to the New Year and we wish you a smoooooth 2015!

Cliff jumping

We went to Lake Placid, N.Y., for our family vacation this summer. On the first day, we stopped into High Peaks Cyclery for the sidewalk sale but left with a plan to jump off a 20-foot cliff.

“You’ll wanna hike from Copperas Pond trailhead,” the guy at the shop said. He was a lean, mean cycling machine. “Take your swimsuits. You can jump off cliffs into the lake.”

The children stood wide-eyed with hope. “Absolutely!” I said, trying to be cool just long enough to leave the shop with some dignity.

I took a map from the man. Good news—there were 10-, 20- and 30-foot death options. We weren’t out of the shop before the kids started howling with excitement.

“No way,” I said. I slammed the truck door and turned to face three very angry would-be cliff jumpers.

“We’re doing it,” Tim said. The kids played it cool, knowing that if there was anyone who wanted to go more than they, it was their dad.

An hour later we sat at the trailhead. The man had failed to mention that the short half-mile hike was also vertical. We pushed on until the trail curved around a lake. Clear, still like glass, trees and cliffs on every shore.

Which is when we heard the laughter. Six guys, all 30-somethings, partying down in the distance around a campfire. Three of them wandered over.

“Are you jumping?” This was their opening.

I took control of the situation swiftly. “Are you?”

We stood on the 20-foot death option looking down as a group. Our family of four and these three dudes.

“We’ve never done it,” they finally admitted.

“Someone should go see how deep it is,” I said.

Kendall and Nelson scrambled down the rocks and into the lake. We could see that the rocks we stood on jutted down into the water as far as they jutted up. The boys dove under as far as they could before bobbing up and reporting, “It’s deep!”

The biggest dude hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a little heavier than a 9 year old.”

That gave me my out.

“Listen up, boys,” I said to my two. “You can jump, if these guys jump first.”

The dudes looked at me. We exchanged a glance of mutual terror. Then, they regrouped. Game on.

Two of the dudes turned on the one with a beer in his hand. “Do it, man! Come on, do it!”

Beer Man crept to the ragged edge and looked down. Take-off would have to be clear and purposeful, and ideally, sober.

“I’ll need a running start,” he said.

Kendall and Nelson joined in with the chanting. At this moment, a horrifying clarity came over me. It was my father’s booming voice: “If your friends jumped off a building, would you?”

About then, Beer Man ran and jumped off the cliff. He flopped sideways in the air like an alewife fish. He hit the water horizontally, a full-length body slap on the water.

We all waited, held our breath and watched. Yes, Beer Man surfaced! Alive! With both legs working! And a stinging red mark down his left arm, leg and face! Unequivocal success!

Even as I celebrated with the group, another horrifying moment of clarity came. This time it was my booming voice: “You can jump, if these guys jump first.”
What had I done? The boys were already stripping down to their suits and toeing the edge.

Kendall jumped first. Then Nelson. Then Tim. All three of the most precious things in the world to me jumped off into thin air and splashed into a lovely, gorgeous, perfect mountain lake 20 feet below. All three surfaced ecstatic and alive.

Beer Man came over and toasted me with approval. “What a cool family.”

And this very cool mom sat there in absolute terror for the next hour as her boys found more and more cliffs to jump off of. But in the end, I was laughing too. Even as I begged them all not to do it.

The Kids Table at Thanksgiving

We ONCE SPENT an entire Thanksgiving Day convincing our cousin Derk to say “sh!t” during grace at the meal.

Xmas 1977, sisters KERRY, LORI & KANDY

What could be more deplorable than cussing during grace? Nothing, so we set about the task. Derk was five years younger than us, prone to cussing anyway and so the perfect front man.

We can remember this as possibly the worst thing we ever did growing up. Yes, we were that good. We would never dream of swearing during grace. Our parents would never believe we were capable of even suggesting it. Therefore, it was fail proof.

Derk would garner our undying admiration, we would derive a vicarious thrill, he would be grounded until eternity, we would maintain our angelic status.

There sat Great Grandma Rae saying grace, her little head barely clearing the height of the table, while her beloved great-grandchildren sat at the Kids’ Table in the back room, scheming the unimaginable.

It was go time. “Do it!” we urged Derk in hushed whispers. And just when she was about to say “Amen,” he let loose the four-letter word.

We all held our breath, stock still, terrified. We looked at the adults and waited. What would happen? Who would be kilt first?

No one, it turned out. We were flat-out ignored. We were not given the floor during grace nor during dinner. As we looked at each other, an epiphany arrived hot in our hands: We were second-string to the turkey.

The women had toiled all day to make us a magnificent meal and, for now, we could just shut up and eat it.

Not to be deterred, we shifted gears to Operation Mashed Potatoes. With a little coaching, Derk could easily launch a well-packed spoonful from here to somewhere between the cranberry sauce and Uncle Dick’s ashtray.

“Do it!” we urged Derk in hushed whispers. (Side note: This was long before the days of internet and other forms of misbehaving. We were in the heart of the U.P. We had to, by default, come up with our own fun.)

We figured angle and distance, timing and stance. The plan was to Launch and Not Look. We would act as surprised as the adults when the potatoes arrived over Aunt Barb's shoulder.

Go time! Derk launched the missile with both gusto and nonchalance. We watched it sail, clearing our heads before we saw it land, splat, on the carpet. We were no mathematicians, but this was bad. It hadn't even left the room, let alone traversed the three short steps up into the dining room.

Which is when the giggles started. We were hysterical with relief, screaming with laughter. Aunt Linda called out a “Watch it, yous!” without looking up. (Sidenote: “Yous” is part of the Yooper vernacular. Used to sign off all birthday cards, i.e. “Love yous.”)

Another epiphany arrived: We had somehow procured an invisibility shield around the Kids' Table. A new freedom rained down upon us. What else could we get away with?

Naturally, Operation Mashed Potatoes turned into an all-out food fight among the cousins. Peas and kernel corn proved to be real flyers, while gravy did the heavy lifting of ruining blouses. Due to Grandma's penchant for side dishes, we had no shortage of things to experiment with.

We soon realized we could all commence swearing, at will, because the turkey was that good that year.

We were, without exaggeration, having a ball.

But it couldn't last forever. When we finally launched Jell-O onto the ceiling, we knew we were in for it. Eventually the shield would be pierced, and, with our luck, it would be our father who would do the piercing. Even with little old gray-haired ladies as witnesses, he never failed to discipline and heavily.

Our goodness came flooding back. We mastered a rebound plan: Send Derk to the kitchen to get a wet dishrag. His only instructions: Do not make eye contact.

Sure enough, he blew it. The adults wanted to know what the rag was for. He stood there mute, the adults expectant, the cousins on tenterhooks.

But then Grandma, as she was prone to do, saved the day: “Yous kids cleaning up the dishes?” she asked, not waiting for a reply. “What good kids!”

What could we say to that except... Amen!

And with that, we wish yous Happy Holidays this year!

Reject a Hit: Runny Babbit

I'm so excited to have another piece published in Writer's Digest this month!

It's their back of the book column named "Reject a Hit" where they ask you to spoof-reject a famous book. This was a fun one to write. I spoof-rejected Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein. My husband Tim suggested it while we were driving to the U.P. for the Fourth of July and it was too irresistible. Instead of enjoying the views of the Mackinac Bridge, I was writing and giggling in the passenger seat with my notebook.

Pick up the November issue of Writer's Digest to read all their great articles (it's my fav writers' mag)! Here's my piece (with text below).

If you haven't read Runny Babbit with your kids, it's a must! Also, it's a fine hit among adults and we've actually gotten physical over whose turn it was to read the next poem aloud. (Kids meanwhile have left the room and started the car. On fire.)

Dear Mr. Silverstein,

Thank you for submitting your pildren’s choetry book, "Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook." At first, I found it cather ratching. I took it home to let it sit awhile, and I had a little fun with it, too, dalking the wog and serving dicken chinner for supper. But, unfortunately, it wore thin and soon my family asked me to nook cormally and leave the wog out of it.

But I didn't give up yet. I took it to a Tarent Peacher meeting. While they argued over dyslexia funding, I shared a sick little laugh over Runny Babbit with my neighbor, the gym teacher. We agreed – your book could be a Four de Torce – but would be the bane of teachers everywhere. I thought it was a "no" for your book at this point. But when Principal Houghton burrowed her frows at us across the empty library, I reconsidered yet again.

Finally I took it to our Meditorial Eeting at the agency. A small scuffle broke out for the pages of your book. Everyone wanted to rolve the siddles in your poems. Rita lost an earring in the deal and Earl blew up a spowl of baghetti in the microwave. But the worst was when Adam put his phone on silent to recite your rhymes out loud, standing on a chair.

And... he missed a long-awaited call for a fix-sigure deal at auction. It's put our agency in jinancial feopardy. We needed that deal. Without it, we can't publish your bamn dook or anyone else's for that matter.

Tonight, my hamily is fungry, my post on the PTA is a ping of the thast and my bagency is ankrupt.

It's a definite no. You've surely put the run on this babbit.

Literary Agent,

Chandace Kapple

10-Day Smoothie Cleanse, plus a bag of Whoppers

I decided to do the 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse. It involved blending spinach and kale and fruit. I felt confident I could trick my taste buds into consuming what my dad calls "rabbit food." I could do this. For 10 days. And eat nothing else. For 10 days. I recruited a friend to do it with me. For 10 days.

3 days, tops.

Day 1: I realize my blender has a "smoothie" button. (Had previously only been acquainted with the "milkshake" button.) I make the first smoothie with a lot of show, fingers running about the recipe with authority. I can feel my cells plump with nutrition. Spinach is consumed. Sugar is not. I walk around with a cocky air all day, one smoothie healthier. Until my head starts pounding at about 4 p.m. This is expected. I settle into being nasty to everyone around me and hold steady.

Day 2: Starving. My body is pulsing from all the green I’ve shoved into it. But I won’t relent. Not on Day 2. That would be an embarrassment for all involved. By 4 p.m., the headache is back and I’m meaner than ever. I decide to bike nearly 2 hours on a glorious fall day. It feels delicious until I bonk in the last half hour. I have to drag my body into the house and apply it to the couch. I sip the last of my smoothie slack-jawed.

Day 3: Get me a grilled chicken breast, someone, now. It’s “allowed” on the smoothie cleanse if, and only if, I can’t stand the starvation. That is correct. I can’t stand the starvation. My arms and legs are weak and lousy after 3 days of nothing but nutrition. I make a mistake then. I do some figuring. The smoothies amount to only 400 calories for the ENTIRE DAY. I am shocked. The only thing harder would be Naked and Afraid.

Day 4: A small Halloween-sized bag of Whoppers is consumed. 100 calories. They are glorious. They taste almost as good as the chicken breast did. I savor each one, allowing the waxy chocolate to disgust and appease me all at once.

Day 5: Wake with a blistering sense of shame. I did not even make it halfway. And worse, I woke up and thought about the Whoppers before I did my own children. I continue making the smoothies, announcing loudly to anyone who will listen that they are, again, only 400 calories for the ENTIRE DAY. My family says nothing. They also do not comment on the tiny Whoppers bags starting to dot the landscape.

Day 6: My partner in crime is holding firm. She has asked me to not send her calorie counts or to talk about Whoppers. I am trying to explain to her that I’m training for a bike race. I will disintegrate into thin air on this diet with one burst of effort on my bike. She asks me how Whoppers fit into my training plan.

Day 6, Evening: In bed, I think about never talking to her again.

Day 7: Go completely off the rails. Discover a smoothie is great with a bowl of ice cream.

Day 8: I weigh in. I have lost 3 lbs. I am overjoyed. I frantically try to regain traction on the smoothie cleanse. If I cleanse the next three days, I can lose 6 lbs. total. (This, the mathematical model for dieters everywhere.) The last of the Whoppers are disposed of through consumption and I vow to buy no more.

Day 9: Only 2 days to go. The smoothie cleanse has been way easier than I thought it would be. I have chicken breast for lunch and dinner. I also resume my relationship with Whoppers in the checkout lane at Tom’s by midday. I was never addicted to them before this but it’s clear now they are tied directly to the effects of spinach.

Day 10: A smoothie in the morning and the 10^th day is checked off. I am relieved. I can continue eating my favorites without the guilt.

In the end: My friend, who never wavered, lost 10 lbs. I lost 2 lbs., hard fought after multiple negotiations with the scale, on and off, on and off, one foot raised, looking West.

But: The biggest plus of taking on the 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse is that it’s been three weeks and I’m still drinking green smoothies every day. My cells are, in fact, plumped. I am a robust model of how the greatness of kale can be drowned in the sweet taste of strawberries or peaches.

While I didn't have the willpower for 10 days, I still recommend the book - 100 smoothie recipes that are easy to follow. Look, it's turned a girl who eats bags of Halloween candy into a girl who (also) eats bags of spinach and kale. Bags.

And: My children and husband are eating smoothies too! We are cranking through spinach and swiss chard and baby kale like a regular herd of rabbits around here.

The Health Benefits of a Brewfest

We came across a delightful new workout in August: The Microbrew & Music Festival. We highly recommend it. Alas, we know it seems at odds with our early morning bike rides and late evening runs. But it turned out to be the perfect complement to the many health benefits currently sought by these 30-something women.

So it began:

We collected our friends in our vehicles and set out into the night—without children of any size or shape. We immediately did what we won’t let them do: turned up the radio and waved to strangers at stoplights.

It was our warm-up. We were feeling stodgy and stiff from a summer of providing constant maid and chaperone services. But tonight was different. We looked good in our new workout clothes: dark denim blue jeans (so new that a millimeter of shrinkage hadn’t yet produced the muffin), cute blouses, accessories and, ensuring a month’s worth of chiropractic adjustments, high-heeled boots.

A feeling of well-being came over us. The casting off of our ratty, holey sweatpants gave a thrill much like that of matching Nike duds bought at the start of every diet.

We weren’t even at the Brewfest yet and our mental health was improving, our waistline muffin-free.

In a half-hour we were inside the gates. There were beer tents in full circle. It was the most nourishing thing we’d seen since school let out in June.

“How many drink tickets come with our armbands?” Immediately, we wanted to know how healthy we were going to get.

“Five.” Five seemed like a serious workout with the added bonus that we wouldn’t be sore in the morning.

We set out, with a healthy interest in a renovated bus occupied by a goateed man handing frothy beverages out one of the side passenger windows.

But we didn’t get far. We kept running into people we hadn’t seen all summer due to the strict confines of our maid and chaperone services. There were introductions, re-introductions and a fair amount of high-fiving. Our emotional health was climbing, and rapidly. We started to feel human again and, dare we say, on track to our fastest mile ever.

“What are you drinking?” As is customary, we compared training plans each time before moving on.

As we progressed ever closer to the bearded man, we noticed he was being assisted by a friend of ours… who works at a health club. More high-fiving. Proof that we were on to something.

In an hour, we were warmed up. We were shocked to see we’d used only one drink ticket. It appeared that a night of freedom, while trapped inside a fence, was invigorating with or without liquid sustenance. We secretly prided ourselves on our low intake of calories.

Next, we decided to hit the silent disco, highly recommended by the bus driver.
But it sounded ridiculous, didn’t it, to gather in a quiet room with people and work up a sweat?

Or just like a gym.

We donned the headsets and were immediately overcome with a groove unlike any found on the stations radioed into a treadmill headset. This was where the squats, lunges and salutes to the sun came in. The workout began in earnest. We hit our stride.

At last, when we couldn’t do another single heel-to-butt kick, we headed over to the outdoor concert for the cool down. We were coming into the finale and it felt good. There was a lot of hooting and hollering, like a finish line at a race. Our legs ached, we were drenched in sweat and we had blisters on every toe. If we’d had a timing chip on, we’d been taking the podium.

And, it was only 10 p.m. We still had time to stretch and hit the showers before heading to bed… for our regularly scheduled workout the very next morning.

May you find ways to enjoy a good workout, wherever it may be.

Back 2 School Shopping

Strike a pose.

I love back-to-school shopping. I have two boys who claim they hate it. But this year, something magical happened under the spell of loud music in a fitting room.

The day started when I gave the command: “Wear shorts and crocs, something easy to kick off.”

This is almost, but not quite, an invitation to the beach. The outfit signals fun in the sun while their eyes signal JC Penney’s coupons. They are confused but compliant, unsure of why this feels like a good time already.

We hit the mall. They are 9 and 11. At this age, the teenage life is perfect bait. We enter stores we’ve never tread for them before: American Eagle, Aéropostale, The Buckle.

I am greeted with deafening music at AE. I assume the position of middle-aged soccer mom and start relaying my requests to the 14-year-old gal running the show, shouting over the music I don’t understand.

“We want the exact outfit on the mannequin up front.”

See that? Genius.

I’ve learned to trust these teenagers. I know they’ve spent hours crafting that headless man in the window and added that necklace at the last minute despite the elder manager’s horror. It’s nothing I would ever put together, but I need only take their hard work, swallow my protests, find it in the smallest sizes made, and reconstruct it in their fitting rooms.

My son puts it on. It’s a red-striped shirt, streaked jeans and a denim shirt.

Whoa, hold up. There are darts on the front of the denim shirt. I step out of the dressing room.

“Is this a girl’s shirt?” I inquire of the woman-child outside the door.
Kendall, my 11-year-old son, howls MOM at me with his eyes.

“Well, is it?” I ask, shutting the door behind me. No reason to have a witness to what is clearly a fashion misstep by the young lady.

However, she assures me that it is not a girl’s shirt.

I re-enter the lair and face my assailant.

“What?” I hiss.

Kendall screeches as loudly as he quietly can: “Why would she bring me a girl’s shirt?”

“Because it has darts!” It’s his chance to come to his senses.

“What are darts?”

Forget it. I tell him the real reason: “I thought maybe she brought the shirt for me.”

Silence. Hands stop mid-air. Hair flutters to a standstill. His eyes pop out of his head and roll across the fitting-room floor.

It never occurred to him that his mother could shop in a store like this. I do some quick math and realize it’s been over 10 years since I’ve done so.

“What?” I hiss.

This time he knows better than to answer me.

He puts on the ensemble: he looks fabulous. Nelson, my 9-year-old son, scores a shirt that is only one size too big and looks hip too. They look cool. I am taken back to the gory and glory of middle school.

A sweet nostalgia comes over me until I realize:

• I’ve got sensible shoes on and want the bench in the fitting room for a rest.
• I’m no longer intimidated by the outrageous fashion sense of the fitting room attendant. I’m now so much older than her that it’s clear I’m someone’s mother and she’s someone’s daughter. We are no longer born in the same century.
• I’m sick of screaming over the music. And—here it is—I think about asking her to turn it down.

What have I become?

I immediately try to conclude our purchasing. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve just traveled from trendy mom to nerdy seventh grader to crusty senior in about 35 minutes.

But it’s too late. I see the boys have caught the rhythm. They are posing in the mirror in their new duds. They are dancing, they are laughing, they are cooperating. And they can’t hear a word I’m saying. Indeed, I’ve found the key to back-to-school shopping.

AuSable River Canoe Marathon Feeder Recap 2014

Smiling! The last feed!

The AuSable River Canoe Marathon is done for another year and we had a great time of it. My husband Tim and his partner PO placed 15th, out of 83 teams. It was a long and grueling night and the boys finished happy. The feeders went from panic to elation every 2 hours and also finished happy. The 120-mile race is considered America's toughest, richest canoe race and referred to as "The World's Toughest Spectator Race.”

9 p.m. - The start: A double rainbow dawns as the teams line up to start. They line up in the street and must sprint, carrying their boats on their shoulders, to the river and put in. Hearing and watching over 160 athletes and their boats thundering through the streets is amazing and fearsome. The put-in at the river is mass chaos with its usual tip-overs and boat-over-boat action.

But then there's the feeders. In a few short minutes, we have to navigate our cars through a mass put-in on M-72 with streams of taillights as far as the eye can see. All with one eye on the road and the other on the clock. If we pick the wrong road to leave town on (there are a multitude to pick from, all of which dump out on M-72) it means we get to the first feed in good shape or all-out panic. They may have a 15-hour paddle ahead of them but we have to navigate the 10,000 fans, in the dark, every 2 hours, starting now.

11 p.m. – First Feed: All the tension from the start line is gone. In its place is a huge weight on our shoulders. If we can pull off this first feed smoothly, we will be handed our confidence for the night, powerhouses on the river in wet shorts and yellow tees. If we flub it up, the night becomes a catch-up game of second-guessing.

We scramble down the grassy steep side of a bridge, muck our way into the river, out around a deadfall in the water and hand them bottles of drink and a container of food and pain pills while a crowd roars above us on the bridge. It’s clean. They are on their way, in 15^th position. We high five and skip back to the car.

1 a.m. – Nap Time: We are so confident after one successful feed, we break the rules. We are going to attempt sleep. Unheard of at this point in the night. We are still high from the adrenaline of the start, but I set the alarm for 20 minutes. We have an hour to sleep if we were really brassy. We aren’t.

We are parked where there is no light. It’s completely dark. Very few other feeders have arrived at the second feed yet, we are that on the ball tonight. The stars are out. I see a shooting star. It’s gorgeous.

We recline our seats 1 inch, the only space available against the coolers in the backseat. We close our eyes. I’m in the driver’s seat and Anais (PO’s girlfriend) is in the passenger’s seat.

Complete, precious darkness envelopes the car. Silence. Peace. Quiet.

“I am in heaven,” I say quiet in the dark.

“It’s amazing,” Anais croons from her shotgun seat.

“It’s better than I could have imagined,” I say.

“I could do this all night long,” she sighs.

A stillness comes into the car.

“Wait,” I say, quieter yet. “Are we still talking about sleep here?”

And the giggles begin. For the remaining 19 minutes, we make explicit and implicit comments. We laugh until we have tears in our eyes. Other feeders start to show up and before we know it, it’s time to go. While we didn’t rest, the nap was a complete success. Spirits are high and we’ve taken our relationship to a new level.

7 a.m. – The Banana Situation: It’s daybreak. It will be our 5^th feed. While we wait to do our feed, standing in the water, we watch another feed team freak out. They are on walkie-talkies. One at the top of the dam, the other at the bottom with us. They are having their own polite but terse debate over what they should feed the team. They end the conversation with, “Let’s discuss the Banana Situation later.”

Anais and I look at each other. We can’t help laughing. Only here would a Banana Situation be apropos.

This feed gets a little hairy. Our team shoots past us at the put-in after the portage and we end up feeding in deep water, throwing shirts, water bottles and curses. It’s a bad scene. But as they paddle away, we note that they have their fresh shirts on, sorta, Tim has fished his bottle out of the water and put it in the boat and they are, once again, paddling downstream. It wasn’t pretty but we classify it a success. We wait until we get to the car to freak out on the near-miss.

The night wears on from there. We end up in a polite but terse debate with a parking guard over what exactly is “double parking.” We can not and will not be waylaid by a man with a glowing baton who thinks I can make it through a ditch in my little car loaded to the gills with Perpetuem and Hammer Gel. I leave the field with dirt and grass wedged in the hitch receiver. We later refer to it as the "Parking Situation."

There are more stories shared and witnessed. We have a night of panic and celebration and finally, we are done with our last feed, eight in all.

Noon - The Finish. We spread out a blanket and wait for them to arrive. Anais is on her 4^th dry outfit, I’ve given up and am trying to dry in the sun. We tried a total of three 20-minute naps all night. We think we actually got 8 minutes worth.

When they arrive, there is jubilation. Very quietly, though. They are hurting and tired. We carefully hug them, watchful of the wear points on their bottoms and hips and hands. We give them fresh clothes and half a sandwich. We give back rubs and ask how it all went on the river. They’ve paddled 15 hours and 39 minutes and some 500,000 paddle strokes.

But all the while, we are very barely containing the feeder stories we have to share. Enough about their marathon, we are waiting to tell them what we saw and did in the crazy, long night… and another year of rehash and war wounds begins!

Marathon Feeders: Signs that you're a lifer

A 120-mile canoe marathon is virtually unheard of by most normal people. But I’ve got a bunch of friends who do something that’s one step closer to crazy – we are the marathon “feeders.”

We feel nothing.

As our team paddles through the night, we wade into the river every two hours and give them fresh food and drink. This means entering the river in the blinding dark with flashing red lights. This means scrambling down the backside of a dam to meet them with a fresh shirt and paddle. This means finding two tracks that lead to a tiny slice of river in the middle of a Michigan night to “check on them.” (At which time, they will flat-out ignore us or shout something unintelligible.)

And after you’ve done it for 10 years, something scary happens. You become a veteran.

First off, you do not want to become a veteran. Everyone will ask you for advice and expect answers. Good ones even. You will be asked to give directions and, horrors, sketch maps for them. You will be expected to know the remedy for everything from nausea to concussions. And, in a shocking discovery, you’ll realize you do. This is when you know you’ve come too far, you’re in too deep. You might be a lifer.

Signs that you are a lifer:

You feel no weather. 

Just a few days ago, I was trading war stories with another feeder. It was only her second marathon. She mentioned the fact that last year’s marathon was so, so cold. The conversation slammed to a halt.

“Cold?” I asked.

“Freezing!” she said.

I grabbed her arm. “Ohmygod, I don’t remember it being cold at all.”

“At all?” she whispered.

“At all,” I whispered back.

Diagnosis final. With robotic precision, I gather, I marched into the river, withstood its subzero temps, delivered the goods and marched back out. I mixed bottles and chopped fruit and pro-offered paddles. I drove back roads and forged rivers. I served with militant focus, repelling precipitation and barometer readings wherever I went.

If I were pressed, I might remember enjoying taking off my cold shoes after the last feed. But overall, I remember feeling neither warm nor cold, wet nor dry. Like veterans everywhere, I had forgotten the pain of childbirth.

You need no sleep.

For the first few years of feeding, your biggest concern is not your team. Your biggest concern is you and your lack of shut-eye. You haven’t pulled an all-nighter since college and, then, booze was involved. This will be a sober endeavor, complete with responsibilities and motor vehicle operation.

With any luck, for the first few years, your team is slow. This means your feeds will be well spaced-out, allotting a few minutes of rest between each feed. These are the golden years. Enjoy them. You are not rushing to each feed, you are only hoping your team will make the cut-off time.

But each year your team will gain speed and, in direct correlation, you will lose sleep. As the years pass, you reason that all you really need is 20 minutes of sleep to survive.

It usually happens at Alcona dam, just after daybreak. You will be so desperate and done at this point that you will knowingly risk the livelihood of your team as you recline your car seat ever so slightly.

You will set 5 alarms in the car for fear of oversleeping. You will ask another 5 feeders to come get you in 20 minutes. You will then close your eyes and have one pounding minute of deep, surreal, gorgeous sleep… before jerking awake at a moth landing on the windshield of a car two doors down. You will go into a full-blown panic before realizing you have 19 more minutes to sleep. You will repeat this 18 more times.

By year 10, well into your veteran years, you will realize it’s just easier to stay the hell awake.

You need no food.

You pack enough for dinner, breakfast and lunch, in that order. You also pack a late-night snack and a late-late-night snack. (You also count out enough drinks for a 15-hour stint in the car. But in the end, you will drink almost nothing. After one trip into the backwoods with Kleenex, you are determined to dehydrate for the rest of the event.)

At first you try to eat. You want to be in tip-top shape for the job at hand. But as the night wears on, you realize you have no appetite (robbed at each feed when things teeter between going very right and very wrong at every second). By 3 in the morning, you reason that you would never eat at 3 in the morning on a normal night, so why now? By 7 a.m., you force half a banana down. By 9 a.m., you realize you’re well on your way to the longest dieting stretch you’ve ever had. If you can tough it out another 6 hours, you’ve got the makings of a scale-detectable weight loss. Your appetite disappears altogether.

When your team finishes, it’s about 2 p.m. on Sunday. You come out of your stupor and realize the sun is shining, you’re starving and you would kill a man to sleep in his bed at that very instant.

But you hang on. It’s still another hour before the hotel check-in. You order a pizza. You sit in the parking lot of the hotel and you very, very slightly recline your seat. You wait for the pizza man. One more feed to go. Like a true veteran, you will not rest until the last job is done.

AuSable Marathon - HUP all night

It's July... time for a canoe marathon! Here's a piece I wrote for Traverse Magazine a few years ago about the AuSable Marathon - I love how the year we did this, the very first stop involved a major repair and fire. The story wrote itself!

Here it is: I hope you enjoy!
AuSable Marathon - HUP all night, Traverse Magazine

If you like this article, here's a first-person account of being a feeder I wrote too!

My Teddy Bear: Letting the kids sleep in my room

My Teddy Bears

It’s happened again. Somehow the boys have started sleeping in our room like the old days. When they were much littler, they slept in bed with us when they were scared and they brought in their teddy bears with them. Now, they’re on the floor next to the bed. One on each side. It started as a sleepover one night after a scary movie and expanded from there.

It initially involved nothing more than a blanket and a pillow. Sacked out, just one night, sleep tight.

But a lightning storm arrived the very next evening, and they begged for the safety of our room again. On the second night, I couldn’t bear to see them sleep on the hard floor. So I built them a little bed out of couch cushions. I threw a sheet on and fluffed their pillows and tucked their comforters in around them, admiring my makeshift handiwork. The dog tried to lie on it and I shooed her off. It might look like a dog bed, I told her, but it’s for my petrified children.

The next day, it happened that we got home very, very late. They begged to stay another night. How could I argue? I was half asleep already, waving to them from over the edge of the bed. Much easier to close my eyes than to walk the length of the house later tonight after falling asleep next to them in their beds.

The next day, I found myself in an aisle at Target considering the pros and cons of traditional inflatable mattresses and the new-fangled three-foot high ones. Wouldn’t the boys just love these? Five-percent-off later, I had purchased them. Five hours later, I was blowing them up in my bedroom as a surprise.

“What are you doing?” This from my husband, booming through the bedroom door.

“They’re for camping. But we can try them out in here tonight.” I pushed a new 10-person tent across the floor to him. “Look, it was on clearance.”
He did not look.

"Ten? There's four of us."

"I know, roomy!" I could not be deterred.

“We have a camper.”

“But we always say we are going to take them tenting!” I was indignant over the whirl of the automatic mattress-blower-upper I’d also purchased.

“You’ll never sleep on a tent floor,” he said.

“Not with these I won’t!” I triumphantly bounced my hand off the towering tippy gray mattresses that stunk the room up with fresh plastic.

It was clear the investment in the mattresses would result in a few more nights camping out in our room. The tent stayed in quiet accusation where it was, in its package, on the floor.

A week in, Tim laid down the law. He unplugged the mattresses, which the kids loved (did I not call it?), and deflated our cozy one-room-house dreams.

“Out!” he said. “Why do we have a bedroom for you kids if no one uses it?”

“The bird uses it,” Nelson replied.

“The hermit crab does too,” Kendall added.

The eviction lasted two weeks, max. Soon enough, a new terror came on the scene. This time it was a “Dog Man” reference made on a late, late nighttime walk in the woods behind the house.

“Can I be your teddy bear tonight, Mom?” Nelson asked.

“You most certainly can,” I said. I did not look Tim in the eye and I did not bother to inflate the mattress this time either. There is no way I am giving up sleeping with a teddy bear, no matter how old I am.

The race is on: Shopping with a twin sister

Imagine trying to find a picture of yourself that you like enough to publish. Now imagine having to compromise with your sister on this photo, thereby choosing a photo that will surpass the vanity of two sisters competing against one other. Welcome to the world of twinhood.

Have you noted our new photo for GTWoman's editorial page in this new issue? It came with a fair amount of bluffing and negotiating.

The dresses
The dresses caused a lot of commotion. For once we showed up at a GTWoman luncheon looking, well, dressed up. Heads turned, comments ensued, theories unfolded. But it was simply that we went crazy one day in Macy’s. I had a 25-percent-off coupon and we needed something new.

Our last headshots were almost three years old. As we gazed at our then-wrinkle-free photos, we felt it was time to come clean. The only way to hide the extreme aging that was about to happen overnight in the new photo was to do it with a little camouflage. Enter my polka dot dress and Kerry’s sky blue number, complete with belts. Some sunglasses wouldn’t hurt either.

The shopping
The only thing harder than finding a dress for yourself is to find it one second before someone else with your identical size and style does.

When we shop together, there are a few unspoken rules. We calmly enter the store at a neck-n-neck slow gait. No one wants to get there first and be called out on being “pushy.” But neither one wants to get there last and get screwed. We walk with precision, side by side through the store, nearing the women’s department at an ever-faster pace.

Once we cross some magical line, we wordlessly split up and enter the department at opposite ends. We pretend to shop our end and plan to meet in the middle. But instead we speed-shop the whole damn section end-to-end in a fierce sweep to find any obvious selections before the other. As we see each other in passing, we murmur things like: “Only if you don’t like it!” and “No, you first!” as we clutch our finds under our arms, out of sight and most certainly out of reach.

The dressing room
Once in our private lair, we quickly do inventory of the million dresses we’ve picked out. To improve the odds, we’ve basically brought in every dress in the store. There is no way we can risk going back out to find more dresses. This will allow the other twin an opening because the ultimate rule is: Whoever gets it on first, gets it. The saying “possession is nine-tenths of the law” applies here with a deadly and steady hand.

Right away, there’s a quiet that comes over the dressing room as we both put on our favorite, hoping it’s not the same one going on over the head next door. We then whip open our dressing room door and holler at the other one to come see!
The only way to trump being the first one to get it on, is to be the first one outside of the dressing room viewing it in a three-way mirror.

The negotiating
There have been CEO boardrooms that have seen less negotiating than a Macy’s dressing room with twins.

And so it is, there’s always one dress that we both want. It’s a no-win situation. The one wearing it will feel guilty, and the one without it will have to insist she doesn't want it. It’s an ugly business being a twin. Success for one means a belted, knee-length blow to the other.

The negotiating starts with these simple words: “If you don’t get it, I will.”
This puts the other sister into a tailspin. She hates the feeling that she must now buy the dress. Most importantly, she no longer wants it because she has been told to get it. By her sister.

This will lead to a full 20-minute debate about the dress, its pros and cons but never, not once, will the sister in possession take it off. There will be twirling and bending and gut-sucking. But in the end, the pressure is too much. The dress is ruined. Neither one will buy it.

The compromise
Finally, we’ll come up with two dresses. One for each of us that is different enough that the other one doesn’t threaten to buy it. A little salute to our individuality. Secretly we’ll both love the other’s dress but play it cool, not wanting to scare her off the purchase.

By then, we are both exhausted. We’ve managed to ransack an entire department front to back without killing each other. The sales staff now knows us by first name and agrees that anything we will buy at this point will look great, if only we will vacate the premises.

It’s easy to see why we only tackle this every three years, isn't it?

Good dog goes bad

I met a friend for a hike through the woods with the dogs a few weeks ago. Everything was fine until we got home and Cookie came over and laid her head on my lap. Oddly. Lolling about. I chalked it up to her undying love for me. Then I got up. And she didn’t.

She tried but she stumbled; then she fell and sprawled out on the kitchen floor. Panic. I tried to coax her but her eyes would look and roll away. I picked her up. She fell down.

I was in an all-out panic. I called the emergency vet. (It was a Sunday, of course.) They flushed her system with charcoal, ran tests and hydrated her. Everything came back normal and Cookie seemed to be coming out of it. No one could figure out what had just happened. We were relieved but bewildered.

I went in Monday morning to pick her up. But they didn’t just hand her back to me. Instead, I was taken back to a bare room with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I was made to wait. I could hear Cookie’s tail drumming the cage bars. And still, I waited. What was the deal? I started to sweat. I took off a layer, my coat and purse on the floor. More time, more thumping.

Finally, the doc appeared. I practically jumped on her in gratitude and worry. “What made her so sick?” I wanted to know. I was not ready to give up the hunt.

Unfortunately, neither was she.

The vet pulled up her chair. Quite close to me, face to face: “Are you sure there’s nothing Cookie got into?”

“Nothing.”

“Positive?”

“Yes.”

“Certain?”

“Yes...?” I was starting to doubt myself. Long pause. Things were getting heated and I hadn’t even seen the bill yet.

“THINK, Kandy!” We were on a first-name basis by then.

“OK, OK...” I was buying time, up against the wall. “Wait, I know! We painted. Did she lick the wall?” I was triumphant, bingo.

“No.” She was unmoved.

I was down to my T-shirt by then, wringing with sweat. What was happening?
Finally,  I remembered that we’d passed a party spot out in the woods, a bonfire. When I told the vet it must have been the leftover cans of PBR and bottles of Boone’s Farm, she relaxed.

“But it wasn’t beer,” she declared with satisfaction. “It was pot.”

I almost couldn’t speak and when I did, I never felt so goody-two-shoes, girl-next-door-innocent in my life. “Did you say pot?”

“Pot, a pot brownie or a pot cookie probably,” she said. “I knew it was pot by the way she came stumbling in.”

We shared a good, expensive laugh then.

So it appears that the vet had been waiting for me to confess. I imagined her whole staff on the far side of the door, waiting to hear what kind of story I was going to feed them. But I had no story. The real story was that my dog was now more experienced than me.

PART 2
The friend I was walking the dogs with that day isn’t just any friend. She’s a friend married to a narcotics cop.

I called her. Indignant.


“Was this a STING OPERATION?”

Five minutes later she sent me a picture of her dog in uniform.

PART 3
This was a fine opener for the “Say No To Drugs” talk with my boys.

When I was done explaining what Cookie had accidentally gotten into and the horrors of drugs, I asked the boys if they had any questions.

My 11-year-old: “What if someone offers me drugs?”

Me: “Say no thanks and walk (run) away.”

My 9-year-old: “But... what if someone offers me brownies?”

Blog Hop: My Writing Process

My friend Cari Noga tagged me in the Blog Hop. This was a fun way to think about what I am really doing with my time and writing! Read on… and see the three women I tagged at the end to hop over and read next Monday!

What am I working on? I am working on stitching together essays into a novel. For the last three years, I’ve written about my mother and losing her. I’ve written about my parenting and how that changed when I no longer had a mother. I’ve written about biking and how it's been my salvation. I’ve written about making new friends when your old life is gone. After three years of writing in increments, taking apart moments of sadness and happiness, I see a pattern now. I can see where I came through the loss of my mother via those friends and my children and that bike. I’m now working on putting those pieces together in a novel, part fact, part fiction.

I’ve posted many of my essays on my blog at www.kandacechapple.com. One of my favorite excerpts, I just reworked as an editorial this month. This particular essay is about four-wheeling, boozing and trampolining. And missing my mom. I also work year-round on my own publication, Grand Traverse Woman, a bimonthly regional women’s magazine I pub with my twin sister. I am the editor and also write a regular motherhood column that is sometimes funny and sometimes incriminating.

How does my work differ from others in the genre?  I feel my work is both serious (working through the loss of my mother) and funny (my mother would not approve of some of these confessions). It’s a combination of writing as deep as I can go, then taking a break by finding something small and real and funny to write about. I like that my writing feels like a conversation between best friends – one minute we’re crying together, the next laughing.

Why do I write what I do? I like to laugh and I like to remember. I wrote for many years while my mother was alive and well. None of that writing means anything now, it is empty. I see now how loss has changed me. I wrote about this writing shift in a recent issue of Writer’s Digest. It’s true. The words I write now carry so much more, a perspective that only grief and overcoming can bring.

How does your writing process work? I like to write in short stretches and short pieces. Often ideas come to me while I am out biking. I sometimes stop in the middle of the trail and get out my phone and make note of the idea. It’s just a few words but I’ll suddenly realize I’ve been thinking about it half the ride. If I don’t write it down, I’ll forget about it even I’ve thought about it for the whole ride. Then, I get home and try to write it out in 30-60 minutes. Sometimes I have to let the idea sit a day or two and then it comes to me, the start. Once I have a start, the rest comes hot on its heels.

I try to devote part of my day to something related to my personal writing (outside of my magazine duties) – stitching essays together, pitching an essay to a publication, writing something new. My favorite part is the writing something new. Taking that nugget of an idea I thought of on the bike and turning it into an essay. Those are always the truest things I write. The things that keep coming to me even when my eyes should be on the trail, the ruts, the turns. They are often the hardest to write - the most emotional and the most rewarding.

OK, next Monday, May 12, hop on over to the following blogs to check out their writing processes:

Heather Johnson Durocher - Michigan Runner Girl is a site written and produced by Heather Johnson Durocher, a journalist of nearly 20 years. – She offers race recaps, running advice and great articles on women and running. She says, “I love Michigan. I'm passionate about running - and all things outdoors in our beautiful state. There's so much to see and do, and I welcome you to come along for the run. And ride. And paddle. It's all about being in a state of motion.” -  Visit http://michiganrunnergirl.com/

Margaret Fedder – Margaret lives in Traverse City, Michigan. She is a mom, a wife, a former teacher, a freelance editor, and an aspiring writer. She says,”when I write, it comes from a place inside of me that just wants to speak truly - about relationships, family, motherhood, spirituality, creativity, memory. But I also like to write about the things I love - like Michigan, the seasons, books, and paper crafts.” Visit http://www.mjfedder.blogspot.com/.

Chris Convissor – Chris is a creative writer, artist and adventurer. She fixes things that act up in and outside of your house to pay the bills and is presently making the transition from full time fix-it person and part-time writer to full-time writer and part time fix-it person. Visit her newly launched blog at Jhidzia.wordpress.com.

A Mother's Day Tribute (on a four-wheeler)

I wrote this in 2008, a year after our mother passed away. It seems a fitting tribute to publish it this year for Mother’s Day, looking back on that first summer without her, when our kids were so little and we were figuring out this motherhood thing all by ourselves. We know she’d laugh.
~

We broke out the cherry wine somewhere between the juice boxes and bologna sandwiches. We hated wine.

“Let’s open this wine and try to learn to like it,” Kerry said, unearthing a corkscrew from the back of her junk drawer.

I cut a sandwich in half for my 3-year-old son and sent a shocked yet pleased look over his head to Kerry. It was a perfect summer afternoon. Yet we both sat there pretending not to miss our mother.

It was an excellent distraction to our pretending.

We were 33 years old and neither adept at opening a bottle of wine. I promptly snapped the cork off half in the bottleneck, half out. Kerry poked the remainder of the cork into the bottle and watched it float before pouring two glassfuls into plastic wine glasses. Kerry’s was neon pink, mine grassy green.

“Cheers!” The plastic thudded in an unsatisfying way.

Our children, cousins, dirty from running in the sprinkler, tan from a summer of no shirts and no school, ran in the yard.

Neither of us could tolerate more than a few swallows of the sour cherry wine. We spit it, with much fanfare, into the burning bush at the edge of the deck. This is when the giggles started.

“Just boozing on a Thursday afternoon,” I whispered. We had, until that very afternoon, lived a prim and proper life. We’d grown up in a little town, lived less than five miles from the home we’d grown up in, had a good job and good kids. Never had we dreamed of getting drunk on a Thursday afternoon. It was a stupid yet very grown-up thing to do. And with no one about to stop us, we pressed on.

“I like where this idea is going, but we can’t do it on wine,” Kerry said, dumping hers in the bushes. “I could run down to the gas station.”

This, too, made us laugh. A beer run on a pretty summer day while the kids played in the yard?

“And leave me with four wild kids?” I liked the idea of getting drunk, but already it was too much work.

“Wait,” Kerry said. “Dad’s not home.” The words were an open invitation to the Smirnoff coolers he loved. And kept in inventory.

Dad, in fact, was 2,000 miles away on vacation in Montana.

“Field trip!” we belted out to the children, who came running. Kerry’s house was a mere half-mile from Dad’s. By cutting through the woods, we could be there in 5 minutes.

In 15 minutes, not only had we hijacked Dad’s fridge, we had also hijacked his four-wheeler.

In 25 minutes, we had figured out how to fit four children and two adults on a slowly creeping ATV with a six-pack balancing on the gun rack.

“Wait till Dad realizes his booze is gone!” we squealed. We were young and daring, stealing a four-wheeler we could borrow any day of the week, clocking 8 mph through the field, wide open.

We rode together, one hugging the other around the waist like we used to when we were 10. Back when things had been simpler, our mom in the kitchen making dinner, dad in the pole barn wrenching on something.

In 45 minutes, we’d traveled as far as we dared with the four-wheeler. Only to arrive, as if by fate, at the trampoline.

“Drinking and driving do not mix, but how about drinking and jumping?”
Everyone liked this idea, or at least we did.

In 50 minutes, tricks and small competitions were unfolding high in the air above the trampoline.

In an hour, the kids were unhappy and we were very, very happy.

“You’re ruining our fun!” the children bellowed. There was a general consensus that moms were too big for trampolines. TWO moms was downright dangerous.
“Then get off!” we yelled. We wondered about the neighbors watching from a distance. The twins had commandeered the trampoline.

The two older children started to cry because they wanted the trampoline back. The two younger children started to cry because they wanted their mothers back.
We poured another Smirnoff over ice in our plastic wine glasses and marveled at how we’d never thought to pour a drink over our sorrows before now.

It was the closest we’d come to having fun since losing our mother, an hour or two of going off the rails and letting go of the grief. It seemed even better that the good times were unfolding on her trampoline, with drinks from her fridge, and under the shade trees she used to share with her girls all summer long.

Nurse Nelson

Nelson was the first one sick. For three days. On the fourth day, mother nurse was down for the count. Another three days and Kendall took the hit.

But there was a one-day period in which Kendall was not sick, Nelson was in recovery and I was sicker than a dog. Nelson stayed home from school on a Monday… and in a surprising turnabout, became the nurse.

Nurse Nelson was reluctant. He was, after all, home sick and wanted to have the TV remote and the toast brought to him. Some brownies and cookies too — after all he was feeling better. The only problem was that his mother was too sick to leave her bed, much less care.

“Nelson,” I called weakly, “can you try bringing me Vernors?” I am not kidding. I was that weak. I had to be to ask a child to open and pour a brand new 2-liter of pop. It was sure to be a 1.5-liter disaster.

But it was nearly noon. I had had nothing to eat or drink for 24 hours. I was going downhill and fast. The puking had stopped and my survival instinct had kicked in. If I was going to make it and feed my own child a lunch eventually, I needed help. And help stood at the end of my bed in a pair of track pants, a running shirt, and, no doubt, yesterday’s underwear.

He carried the very full glass of Vernors in and stopped at the end of my bed.

“Sorry, Mom, I might catch it,” he said, reaching a very short arm out a very long ways.

I stared at him. He stared at me.

Finally, I spoke. “You gave this to me.”

“Oh, I did? That’s right.”

“Give me that,” I seethed. But my indignation was working in my favor — my verve and vigor returning with it. “Now get me some toast.”

This turned out to be the biggest challenge in his 9 years.

“How?” he bellowed from the kitchen. Soon I was screaming instructions that took more energy than actually making the toast. When I caught sight of him ransacking the utensil drawer for tools, I knew the show was about to begin.

“Where’s the bread?”

“You’re leaning on it.”

“Oh, that's right.”

Some twist-tie untwisting, the sound loud in the quiet house. I resist further instructions, sip my Vernors and wait.

“Where’s the jam?”

“Top shelf of the fridge.”

“The top?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no top shelf.”

“Yes there is, keep looking.”

“Oh, you're right.”

I watch him fumble the jar down. It’s as big as his head. He would have dropped it if not for the grip of jam drip dried down the side of it.

“So I just, uh, put it in the toaster?” he asks.

“Just stick it in and press the lever.”

I see then he is poking the electronic death machine with a long, shiny stick.

“Put the knife down!” I yell. I am sicker than I was before this all started.

With more coaching, he wrangles a piece of bread in and out of the toaster. I hear the jam jar open, the lid clatter to a stop on the floor. Some sawing and pushing and shoving. He’s going to town on it. I say nothing.

“So, I spread it like this?”

He presents me with the cutest piece of barely toasted toast ever made. On his Star Wars plate. With a blob of jam high and mighty in the middle. A few edges pulled at with a knife. It’s clear he gave up before he started.

At this point my wrath disappears and I am overcome with love.

“Oh my God,” I cry, “get the camera!”

“WHAT?” He’s the indignant one now.

I sit up in bed, using my last ounce of strength to take his picture. He poses reluctantly but I don’t care. He doesn’t know it, but this is the bestest, sweetest, perfectest slice of toast I will ever eat in my life.

Networking Tips

Networking at its best:
A GTWoman Wine Tour - next one is April 25th!

In honor of our career issue, we thought we would rehash the landmines known as networking events.

We host monthly women’s events and we always walk away with a multitude of stories… both good and bad. Here, we talk about the blunders and missteps (ours and others!) of any good social event.

The Talker
We’ve all done this: started to tell someone about your business and the next thing you know, it’s taken an unseemly path into your third-grader’s hygiene habits. You are thinking: “Why can’t I shut the front door?” and yet you rattle on.

If this thought crosses your mind, you can rest assured it has crossed the mind of the woman you are talking to. Pull up the reigns and look into her eyes. Exactly, she has no eyes. They are glassy marbles set in her sockets at this point.

Don’t panic. You can still save this. You’ve put this woman into a talking coma and it’s your responsibility to resuscitate her. Do so by leaving. Run, exit the scene, excuse yourself immediately. She will not wonder why you made a hasty exit, only be happy you did so.

Takeaway: It’s not the story you’re telling that is the death of a conversation. What’s usually the problem is the dead-on roar of 100-plus wine-fueled women in the room with you. There’s chaos, good chaos, but to talk too long to any one person leaves the woman wondering what she’s missing behind her?

The Closer
God, no, do not go for the close on your first meeting with someone. This will turn off any and every woman within a mile. Sure, it’s a good time to let people know what you do, but don’t ask for an appointment the moment your hand hits hers. Why not? you ask, The point of networking is to network.

Alas, if this is your take, write any meetings you land in pencil. Appointments made under duress will surely be canceled later: grandmothers and pets dying left and right as ironclad excuses. The woman will agree to see you when you are face to face, but back at the office she’ll come to her senses and maim her dog herself to get out of meeting you.

Takeaway: Take it slow. This is First Base. If you go too fast, someone’s gonna die (Granny).

The Non Follow-Upper
You have a great idea. You told people all about it at the last networking event. You were going to change the world! You met someone who was going to help you change the world! But she never called you about it… You can’t help yourself: You are a wee bit indignant the next time you cross paths again.

But leave your hurt feelings for another day. Here’s what really happened: The woman went home with your business card in her pocket, washed it with Tide and then, later, picked it in tiny bits out of her dryer. She had great intentions of calling you, but even greater intentions of doing the laundry.

This happens after meetings all over the world. But do they go crazy trying to read your card, piecing together lint and letters to do so? Not likely. Instead, they let themselves off the hook with one thought: if she wants to talk, she’ll find me.
 
Takeaway: Make the follow-up call yourself… because most people don’t. If you do, you are ahead of others competing for her time and interest. Your idea might not be the best or the brightest, but hurray for laundered business cards that level the playing field.

Takeaway No. 2: Don’t become a stalker. Following up once or twice is fine. If someone evades you vaguely, good news: She’s told you “no” without having to come right out and insist that she is, in fact, booked through 2017.

Instead, set sail for a new shore and part on good terms. Heck, you might connect at another event down the road. Where you can regale her with a story about your third-grader’s “incident” at recess.

So, ladies, with our career issue, we advise you to heed our warnings and enjoy networking drama-free!

First Spring Bike Ride - yeowza

Notice snowmobile parked behind me.

I just went for my first bike ride since Peak2Peak. Last fall, I finished the 22 miles of P2P, got off my bike and didn’t look at it again for THREE MONTHS. Very unlike me. I'm not sure what happened, but I think it was one of those “let’s end things on a high note since I didn't die in that hellacious race” kind of excuses. 

But today it was sunny, 36 degrees and for some reason, it was time. A thrill raced through me. I ran through the house, gathering loads of long underwear and bike helmets, trying to find my garb before I lost my nerve.

Then I hauled my bike up the stairs out of the basement, shifted it about 3 times accidentally in doing so, applied the brakes once as it almost backed over me and finally rolled it out into the fresh air. Welcome back to the light, my friend.

Bonus: I had to roll it past the snowmobile Nelson parked in the garage last night. The irony was not lost on moi, who did a little jig to defy mother nature and her snow today as I headed out.

Mile 1. Golden. MY god, I felt manic, pedaling like a fool, wind in my face, Under Armor top and bottom, little charcoal packets in my shoes and mittens, shaking away.

Mile 2. Shitola. Reality set in and I quietly, without debating it with anyone at all, shortened my route from a hilly 16-mile loop to an easygoing scenic 11-mile loop around Lake Ann.

Things that soon unfolded:

My fan base: In the course of 11 miles, I got a honk & appreciative wave, a “Woo Hoo!” hollered from a man in his driveway… and a fluffy white Shih Tsu that kept pace with me much longer than I’d like to admit.

My pants: I don’t remember my spandex bike shorts having a steel band in the waist last time I wore them. I also developed a weird side ache that wasn't in my side but more in the middle, where my belly was being sliced in two.

My tire pressure: I have these fancy bike valves that require me to learn how to use them, which I refuse to do as a boycott against why they have to make them so fancy anyway? So, I checked the pressure with the all-knowing thumb-press. And found it to be spot-on (as usual when using this method). This, of course, meant I proceeded to check my tires three different times on the road, as, despite the thumb press, my speed indicated I was traveling on a flat.

My foot warmers: Due to the weird purple marks on my toes, it appears I used the foot warmers incorrectly. Afterward, I read the directions - they are not for use in shoes with air circulation (you might consider the mesh in my bike shoe this very thing). Why would this matter? I scoffed. Because oxygen activates them to a temp of approx. 109 degrees. (Sidenote: The only thing worse than really hot feet is being in skin-tight, sweat-soaked Under Armor that you can't possibly peel off on the side of the road, or maybe ever.)

My doctors: About 30 minutes in, I started thinking a lot about my chiropractor, like what her hours are and if my back was going to need a brace. 45 minutes in and I was thinking pretty heavily about my ob/gyn too.

My speed: I was held hostage to guessing my speed for a full hour. I couldn't reach in my pocket and check my Garmin because I was wearing mittens the size of Michigan. At first, I was a galloping horse and I felt no need to know my speed, for it was amazing and I needed no proof of otherwise. Five minutes later, I was wondering about the pavement, was it slower when it was cold? Was my perception off because the trees were bare, no leaves to gauge the passing of a biker? Was that the wind at my face, the same wind that only moments ago that I swore was at my back? Later, when I checked my Garmin speed at home, it was shockingly accurate. I was going slow.

So this was my first ride back in the saddle. Oh how I've missed biking!!!!