Speeding Smarter

Today I broke the law, a lot. I had about 30 miles to cover in 30 minutes. I dropped the kids off (late) for babysitting and proceeded to get on the freeway near my house. Luckily the speed limit is 65mph on the stretch of I-70 that I drive, so that means I can get away with at least 70 mph. I don't like to push it much over that in that section, because there are usually state patrol cars lurking off to the side around bends and behind shrubbery. So when I passed by the friendly state patrolman pointing his radar gun at me this morning, I was actually driving 5 mph under the speed limit. Whoo-hoo. This was about 2 miles away from the C-470 merge. After I merged onto the 470, I don't think I drove anywhere close to 60. I drove those 20 miles at speeds between 72-80 mph and even drove well over 80 when my motorcycle friend was driving in front of me. Mr. Motorcyle Man helped me cover a good 10 miles in no time. My strategy here was to stay with a buddy. When I need to speed, I always choose a nice friendly driver who is driving alongside me at a speed I feel comfortable driving at, and I get behind him and drive just a little bit slower. It's security. My friendly speeding buddy will be the first one targeted and will get caught before me and I will be able to gently step on the brakes as I drive by him.

See, I don't really like to speed anymore. Well, I can't lie, I love to speed, I just don't like getting caught. It's really been a hard habit to break. I learned to drive in Arizona where (as you may have noticed, lately) they've got bigger fish to fry than moms driving around in minvans at high speeds. From the moment I got my driver's license in Arizona, I drove at least 15 mph above the speed limit on I-10 every time I drove. I was passed several times by police cruisers who would tailgate me so I would move out of their way and never once did I get a single speeding ticket on the highway. (I did get one in town once for driving 20 over in a 35 mph zone.) The lesson I learned from this is that you have to know where to speed. It's okay to speed down the interstates of Arizona, but it's not okay to speed down Broadway near downtown and the university, where people may be drinking and driving and engaging in all sorts of other illicit activities.

Arvada, where I live, is not the place to speed. I have learned that you should never drive more than 5 mph over the speed limit in Arvada. There are police cars laying in wait to catch you almost every day of the week and if you're doing a lot of driving around town, you will almost always get caught. Last year I was pulled over on my birthday and I saw the officer look up and smile slyly as he was writing up my ticket as if to say "ha-ha." That time I was caught driving 10 mph on a downhill stretch of a road where the speed limit was 30 mph, like they are on the majority of roads around my town. Since then, I've tried to do most of cross town driving on the few roads that have speed limits of 45 mph. The police can be sneaky, but I've learned to be sneaky too. And, okay, I admit it, they almost have me trained. I am a reforming speeder and I do feel guilty for all my law breaking earlier today. This is my confession.

New names

Ha! I was just reading my sister's blog. She likes to give nicknames to everyone in her family and had some new appellations for every member of my family. I'm laughing, but I don't know if everyone else is. I just need to put a picture of every member of my family next to the name.

When-I-gave-a-lecture-at-Harvard"-anecdote-spewing G-Lens, Disturbingly-Mommy-like Barbarian, Random-often-accurate-fact-spouting Abel, Infinitely-nongullible Chameleon, Snake-activist Mawky, Constantly-somersaulting Lenny

Rethinking Dinner

I've never wanted to be one of those people that write "momblogs." So much of my day is spent being a mom, that I'd rather write about something else in my spare time. Does that make me selfish?

So tonight for dinner, I was a bad wife. I am embarrassed to admit that I had a 4:00 snack that squelched my desire to eat anything else. It was a very substantial snack--4 molasses cookies from Costco - 4. After I finished the fourth one, I managed to hide the rest of the box from myself, but I didn't want to think about food anymore

So husband comes home and asks what I want for dinner. I say "Didn't you hear me say that I just ate 4 ginormous Costco cookies?" "Well," he says "what do you want for dinner that's light?" As little as possible. I was trying to skip dinner because of the guilt over eating four HUGE cookies.

So he made turken (turkey bacon) BLTs with frozen peas on the side. (The peas compensate for at least one of those cookies.) It was a  very small meal and nothing fancy like the traditional "dinner" I had imagined up in my head of preparing for dinner. You know what I'm talking about, the traditional main dish casserole, with rolls on the side, along with a dish of peas, and a Jell-o salad. My husband compensated for his lack of snacking on four Costco cookies by eating four BLTs to the one that I ate to make him feel good.

Next time I hope that I'll be able to put aside my guilt at overindulging and just make something. I think  that somewhere along the line, just by virtue of being a woman, I came up with this idea that the perfect family dinner has to fit this perfect little mold. And if I can't prepare this ideal dinner, because I don't have enough time, or ingredients, or energy or whatever to prepare the perfect dish, I worry that whatever else I do make won't be good enough for my husband and for my family. So what usually ends up happening? My husband, whom I've been worrying about providing this perfect meal for, comes home to no dinner and cooks dinner himself. And the strangest part about this whole circle, is that he actually enjoys cooking dinner--but I still feel guilty.

The funny thing is that it doesn't even matter. Does it really matter what we ate for dinner? The important thing is that we ate dinner and our kids ate dinner and we all sat down at the table together to eat it.

This Phase of my Life I call "Driving"

Does that voice in your head ever starting narrating your life as you live it? Mine does and right now it's sounding like that movie "The Pursuit of Happyness" where the Will Smith character was just trying to scrape by with a place to sleep for his son. He had a phase in his life he called running. I have that one too- not the same as his - but right now I can hear myself narrating: (not that my life would ever be made into a movie) "This is a part of my life I like to call Driving."  And yes, I do know that school's only been in for 1/2 a day.

I mean people have to travel right? I grew up in a sprawly western town and I had to drive a lot to get places. I had to drive to my job, I had to drive to the university. I had to drive to get to church. I had to drive to get where I needed to go. So, for right now, I can drive to get my daughter to where she needs to be. Or, rather, to get my sons to where they need to be and to pick up my daughter from where she needs to be. Yeah, my husband helps, and I've arranged a little carpool, so it's not that  bad. And, for now, all of this driving is keeping me from having to homeschool.

I'm really trying to work on the positive self talk right now. Remember the days when you used to sit around reading books to the kids for hours to pass the time? The kids were small, you had nowhere to go, and you had to make up errands to have something to do outside of the house. Well, those days are gone and right now I need to go pick someone up.