Out

I'll make this short (unlike the rest of my entries).

When you're a writer, who writes a lot of things and perhaps spreads herself too thin, well....you've spread yourself too thin. As I have.

I'm not ruling out trying 12 new things.

But I am ruling out blogging about them.

I am working on a play.
I am working on a book.
I am working on a story.
I write freelance features.
I write freelance business writing.
I need to work on my website.
I run. A lot.
I Twitter.
I Facebook.

Something has to go. This blog is it.

Coming here to write has become something I kind of dread.

Things you do--hobbies--should be fun. Otherwise why do them?

I am not getting any joy out of this blog. It's become something I dread.

Blogging for me has been largely the "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" philosophy.

People pay for my writing. And I write stuff on my own, for a different audience, depending on what I'm writing. I guess.

And the blogging thing just stretches me too thin. It disallows focus on other things. Not running. but writing. It's one more thing I Have To Do.

And that's not what it should be.

I'm not ruling out starting another blog for now, and I do love this one for its discourse on rowing and biking and being the age I am. It's like a little snapshotty journal.

But--at least for now--I'm out.

No bikes, but CaICIC instead!

(NB: Though I am publishing this in September, it was started in August. So there.)

This month has been about revising things. Well, this whole summer has.

I'll get to the "trying" in a sec.

On a side note, I feel like this has been a weird summer. I've been keeping myself busy, but things just kind of aren't going how I wanted. I've seen my husband not that much, and primarily on vacations. He's had a bunch of projects keeping him busy, least of all the deck railing he set out to do this summer, which has become a huge deal. People: it's a deck railing. And by people, I mean husband? Only yesterday has all the construction detritus been taken away. I'm glad, but...like 2 months too late, you know?

Maybe that's what August is about. Trying to be patient.

But who am I kidding, that's beyond entirely unlikely and possibly the subject of a whole other blog.

So...I don't know. I've just felt like this summer has been kind of strange--not bad!--just strange. Like it wasn't the happy-go-lucky party party summer that I had kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really envisioned? I tend to have things in my head that only ever sort of vaguely get actualized.

Soon, we will have a patio. Well, okay, maybe not soon. That's another issue. The stove that we bought in May is now in its final resting place and kicking ass.

So! Guess what?

It's August 30 (!) and I still haven't learned to bike.

Part of it is because I haven't gotten a bike yet. Can't buy one. Don't even have a helmet. I'm admittedly not very motivated. It will probably take me another running injury (bite your tongue!) to get on one. I can just see myself getting on a bike and getting injured or having a bike accident...yeah, you can't live in a bubble and fear everything, but you know what? I don't think it's time. The person who's going to teach me is about to leave on a 3-week trip anyway.

So I'm going to get on a post that is two weeks late and talk about something else: Ice Cream.

Specifically: Cake and Ice Cream Ice Cream (CaICIC)

Yes! Ice cream.

I love cake. It's probably my favorite dessert, really. But I can't eat most cakes nowadays due to the gluten-free thing. But regardless, you know what's the best? Having frosted cake, with ice cream, when it's all in one bowl and you can mush it all together? I love that.

But they're usually separate.

Cake. Then ice cream. Cake and ice cream. Separate things.

Why is this?

There is cookies and cream ice cream. It's okay. I never got the whole dunking oreos in milk thing.

But there's not cake and ice cream ice cream (CaICIC). Why not? They throw everything else in ice cream. There is cake batter ice cream (Ben & Jerry's, I think). There is birthday cake ice cream (well, there was. Umpqua made it for a limited time last year, but it was more cake flavor with sprinkles than actual chunks of frosted cake).

But there's not CaICIC to speak of.

It was time to bring in the big guns.

My friend J. has an ice cream maker. And she is an incredibly able ice cream devotee and sugar gourmand. An apt hand in the kitchen, that J. And we have similar takes on food in general (except she disagrees that raisins in food immediately ruins the food. and I just discovered, does not like Nutella. we will forgive).

J. is a big gun. Actually, she's a person, but suffice it to say she knows her shit.

So: Though J. has made many, many ice cream flavors, J. had never made cake and ice cream ice cream. So we both would be trying something new.

I baked the cake in advance. It wasn't just any cake. Since I'm gluten-intolerant, the cake had to be gluten-free. Rather than come up with the proper alchemy and money outlay for the necessary flours, I picked up a mix. Whole Foods has really good gf cake mixes, and they're relatively inexpensive. The white cake, which I have made before, is pretty good, although tends to be a bit sugary sweet. This isn't bad, and it beats the Bob's Red Mill cakes, which require more ingredients and tend to have a beanier flavor. (But their gluten-free cornbread mix is wonderful. If you add salt. And maybe some cheddar. And jalapeno. But I digress again.)

We were to make the ice cream on a Sunday. So late Thursday evening prior, I baked the cake, according to the guidelines on the package. I went along with the bread pudding principle, that the longer it takes to get dried out, the better (mold notwithstanding).

While the cake was baking, I made frosting from scratch, involving melted Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate, butter, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar. (It's basically the recipe on the back of the box. Frosting should trend sugary, not buttery. The ideal is a buttery cake and a sugary frosting, not the other way around IMHO.)

The frosting was good.

The cake sat in the fridge.

It is very hard for a cake to sit in the fridge. Not hard for the cake, but for me.

Come Sunday, the cake came out of the fridge and it and I headed over to J.'s.

Chico, J's dog, wanted to help. I heart Chico. You know how there are some animals you just like? Chico is one.

That isn't cake he's got there, though.

This is a closeup of the cake. Note the slice that was removed prior to making the CaICIC. For quality control, of course.

The cake was good! The icing was better. This is not to say that the cake was bad, because the cake wasn't bad. The cake was good. But sometimes icing gets better by sitting. This is one of those times.

J. had already made the base for the ice cream. Very vanilla, nice loads of bean flecks in there. I think it would also work well with an eggy custard-type, or maybe even custard texture, like we did that day with another ice cream.

Getting ready to assemble in J.'s cool kitchen.

The cake needed to be cut in pieces prior to adding to the ice cream. We did this while the the ice cream was churning. I think we ate about half of this. It was cake! It was good! It was hard, all that waiting!

Hmm, I thought I had a photo looking into the ice cream maker, but I guess not.

We added the cake chunks in about the last 2-3 minutes or so, slowly. My concern was that it would crumble and be crumb-ey, rather than cake-ey.

It kind of did but it didn't. What did crumble added a nice, pleasing, pebbly texture. There was enough of the cake chunk to give it some heft and body and like you were aware that there were actual cake chunks in the ice cream, not just something that was making the ice cream thicker somehow.

So that was good; I like my ice cream loaded with goodies, so much that the ice cream is almost a delivery vehicle for the add-ins. I think J. is more of a purist.

But what really stood out was the icing. Not only was the icing good on its own, fresh or slightly stale and cooled, so that it chipped off the cake like fudge, but blended into the CaICIC, it provided these great stripes of sweetness. I found myself digging for them like in a Ben & Jerry's pint. Mining, if you will.

Here's a closeup, with an artful chunk of cake placed atop.

And how it looked, after overnight in the freezer:

In sum, I'd say it was a successful experiment. The rate at which I ate the two pints I took home was a pretty good indicator of that (I don't think the stuff was home even 24 hours).

There are, however, several things I would do differently in the future, providing J. is interested in another go:

* Higher frosting: cake ratio. This was about 1:4 frosting to cake. I would up that to 2/3 frosting, 1/3 cake. Make it in a shallower pan and ice the crap out of it. Because you're already making CaICIC, you know?

* Marble cake? Chocolate and vanilla together, with chocolate frosting in a vanilla base would work. Like the ebony and ivory of ice creams.

* Churn the ice cream for longer. I think we were just overeager, and didn't want this to turn into a brick.

This makes me want to do future endeavors, for sure. My only sadness is that summer is slipping away, and soon it will be time for things like crockpots and holiday cookies. Right?

So that was the August try. What will September's be...?

Next try: Biking

I can't ride a bike.

I never learned.

I was a kid once, believe it our not.

I had a bike. It was pink (I'm a girl). I had training wheels. I remember my dad used to take me up to the local elementary school (where I did not go) and I used to ride my bike around the parking lot.

I liked it a lot.

Then the training wheels came off. We were on the sidewalk, in front of my house. I fell down. I said," This is stupid, I'm never doing this again."

And I didn't.

I wonder if that's how it really happened, though. You know how memory changes as you age? Maybe it didn't really go down like that.

Maybe I fell down and had a neighborhood kid laugh at me.
Maybe I fell down and cried and my parents told me I didn't have to do this.
Maybe I yelled at my parents that I didn't want to do it and they made me.
Maybe my parents taught me wrong. They are kind of inept people. Maybe my dad was holding when he shouldn't, and didn't let go when he did. They aren't normal. They don't do things right.

I can blame it all on them, right? That's the thing to do, right?

Any of these things could have likely happened.

So I want to learn now.

But I don't know how. A friend has offered to teach me. This is my running partner's boyfriend, who is a friend in his own right (you know how sometimes that's not always the case, it's X and her BF, or whatever).

But I don't have a bike. I don't want to buy a bike specifically for this purpose--what if I hate it? I guess that's what craigslist is for...but I prefer not to deal with the initial cash outlay if I don't have to.

I need to borrow a bike. Or find a beater bike somehow.

I really don't want to pay for one.

I would rather pay someone, a group, a session, a clinic or something, for use of a bike to learn on. I don't know if I will be a bike rider. Just that I need to learn how to ride a bike. I need to be able to do it. I don't have to go out and do it on a regular basis. Just that I know how to do it.

I have done a precursory search. There don't seem to be any clinics or group adult lessons to learn how to ride a bike. Is that because Portland is such a bike-friendly city that it's assumed, like, why would you move here without a bike or at least knowing how to ride the fuckin' thing?

I'm striking out.

There are an obscene number of stores that sell bikes, bike accessories, bike this, bike that...I find it all so complicated and overwhelming. I don't want any of that. It's tools and jargon and I don't like tools and jargon. Even rowing had too much jargon (I'll get back to rowing in a sec). Biking seems like a good thing to do if you are mechanical person. A mathematical person. From what I have heard so far, biking involves a lot of numbers.

I'm not a mathematical, mechanical person. I want the kind of bike that people ride around canals in Amsterdam. Alongside the Mekong. I don't want to be able to go zipping by in some bike race.

I just want to be able to do it.

Let me tie up the rowing loose end: I didn't do the regatta after all.

Work had something to do with it. But the other things that had to do with it was the fact that I took an extra session on the Wednesday before the regatta (due to travel and oversleeping, I had missed the last class and the one before it, as well as an optional practice session).

And it was fucking horrible.

I was in seat 7. I was behind someone who was rowing at race pace. I didn't know what that was. Our usual coach wasn't out there. I didn't like the one who was. Jargon was called out that I'd never heard. I was rowing (if you could call it that) with people I'd never rowed with before. I had to try to pretend I knew what I was doing. It was the definition of failing miserably. I was miserable. And failing. I was my own FAILblog.

I was that person in the boat.

I didn't want to be that person in the boat. I didn't want to be the loser who made everyone fuck up. This was way over my head. I wasn't ready. It wasn't like, oh, I had a bad day out there and buck up...kind of thing. It was like, I'm going to be miserable the whole time if I have to do this.

So I took myself out of the situation.

I might take an intermediate class next year.

But for now, it's time to run. I've got a marathon I want to finally race. The past 2 years I've had a curse in August/September, where injuries sideline me until well into the fall. My foot's been feeling weird and I don't want that curse to pop up again.

Which is why I am completely terrified of falling on a bike and not being able to run.

Whoops

Yesterday morning. Terrible night's sleep. Dreamt I slept through my rowing class--my last real one!--to...sleep through my rowing class.

The alarm was set for 4:45 a.m. For some reason, the volume had been turned down--I think I knocked it when I moved some clothes on my dresser.

(Hey, it's a $5 alarm clock. It doesn't play music, it plays static.)

I woke up, panicked. 5:45.

I missed the class.

I couldn't even go down to the boathouse, because they would have already been well away from the dock.

I was sad.

You know what bothered me? Not only missing out on something I like, but the paranoia that creeps in--oh my gosh, what if people have a great rowing day out there and they start thinking that *I'm* the one who's the fuckup?

There are a few practice sessions before the regatta, but I can only make 1 of them (and barely at that).

Saturday @ 7 -- I'm running. it'll be early because of the hot.
Monday @ 5:30 a.m. - Can't make this one.
Wednesday @ 5:30 a.m. -- Can make this one, but it'll be on not much sleep and I'll be shitty, I bet.

I'm annoyed.

But I still want to do this. I said I was interested, and I will follow through.

I think.

I am a big planner. A big committer. I like to say "hey, yeah, I'll go and do that, " or "Let's get together," or "I'll throw a party!" anything like that--but really, when it comes down to it, there are very few things (if anything) that I don't want to cancel last-minute.

I think I've gotten better at this, but it's still my first impulse. To say "Naw. I won't do it, after all."

I don't know why I do that, but I do. It is innate. Oftentimes at parties--even ones I throw, especially ones I throw--I go upstairs and hide a little bit. Like, I use the pretense of checking in on the cats, which are sequestered in a bedroom. I just feel like I need to hit the "pause" button on myself.

That's a feeling that's not concrete enough for me to make one of my Tries. It's just something I'm sharing.

But I think I need to go to this regatta.

Eek.

Wow, have I not written since July 8? That's not good. I must become a better blogger. maybe that will be one of my tries--blog every day for a month?

Rowing is going pretty well, I think. Yesterday out on the water was nice--it doesn't hurt that it is insanely hot for Portland lately, and it's much nicer than to gut it out trying to do a 8-ish mile run that involves Mt. Tabor and improper hydration. Do as I say, not as I do, kids.

I've decided I'll do this regatta the first weekend in August. I think we'lll kind of suck but at least we'll have fun. Right? I hope? There seem to be some cool people in the class, I'm not worried about that, but it's more of the "Wow, I hope we don't completely embarrass ourselves."

So I've been thinking about my next try. I'm pretty sure it's going to be having to learn to ride a bike.

We are planning a quick roadtrip to SE Oregon soon, but I can't really use that as one of my tries. I'm not trying anything. I'm just going somewhere. By that end I couldn't use the Japan trip, but the "I'd never been to Asia" element kind of makes up for it. Right?

Also the eating meat thing will probably have to happen.

Maybe.

More soon, after I've thought more about bikes.

Today was not so the greatest day

Haven't posted in a while.

Monday it was too windy to go out there. There were whitecaps. So a few of us used the ergs and then I left, drove home, changed and went for a 4-mile run. Too windy to row = wonderful to run. Cloudy, breezy, felt good.

They will tack an extra, make-up class onto the end, but I'll be unable to go that day. So either we can apply it to another class or just get $15 back (10 classes are $150). I haven't decided which I am going to do. More on that later.

Monday I was up late and so woke up too late on Tuesday to get my run in. I went in the evening. By then it had cleared up and it was hot! I think running in the heat (and when you run, 70 and sunny = heat!) is something I will always have a hard time getting used to.

Since I moved to Portland right around the time I started running (outside, as opposed to treadmill), I don't know if it's that I got used to the cool vs. the hot or that I just got older and less able to deal with the heat or quite frankly if I've become a big fucking wuss...but I like cloudy + 50s/60s. At least to run in. If I want sunny and hot, I also want an umbrella drink in hand.

Or to be on the water.

Because this morning it was cool, and a little bit breezy. Certainly not as windy as Monday (and ironically, Tuesday, the day I don't have class, the water was super-calm and still). It was definitely the choppiest water we'd been in.

Rowing this morning was a pain in the ass (and, I suppose, the wrist).

Today was one of those days that you just don't have confidence. We learned to feather the oars, which I still haven't mastered. Feathering basically means you slightly angle the oar by twisting your wrist when the oar comes out of the water. I can't remember which wrist it is, I think it's the inside. Let me find a link that, once again, explains it better than I can.

Oh! Look! Wikipedia to the rescue. Not only does it describe the feather, but it also describes what I haven't yet tried to explain about the "catch" and such:

The two fundamental reference points in the anatomy of a rowing stroke are the
catch where the oar blade is placed in the water, and the extraction (also known as the 'finish', 'release' or 'tapping down') where the oar blade is removed from the water. After the blade is placed in the water at the catch, the rower applies pressure
to the oar levering the boat forward which is called the drive phase of the
stroke. Once the rower extracts the oar from the water, the recovery phase begins,
setting up the rower's body for the next stroke.

And here's the feathering info:

sweep oar rowers usually feather and square the oar with the inside hand (the
one closer to the rowlock), allowing the handle to turn within the outside hand, whose wrist remains flat throughout.

I totally did this wrong. I think. My wrists were sore, which is how I know. How are one's wrists sore? I don't know, but I can tell you that it is possible.

What feathering meant to me is that you turn the oar so that the blade is flat and then turn it back to straight before you dip it back into the water.

I don't know, at least I wasn't behind the guy who doesn't know what he's doing. And continues to not know what he's doing. He kept getting called out "Slow down!"

And the boat wouldn't balance, and it wasn't my fault, so that every time I tried to row the bot would go all cockeyed and I couldn't get my stroke right. And then we didn't have a cox today, so folks took turns steering. We need a cox. We're all pretty sad silly novice rowers. We need cox. Ha. That's funny.

Anyway, I knew today would be like one of those days, we were told it would be one of those days.

So now I might go to Seattle in August for a regatta. There is a category for novices who have not learned to row before June 1. I'm tempted; the houseguests I thought we were going to have might move until Labor Day weekend. We'll see. I might know more today.

I also haven't decided if I want to do an intermediate class. If so, I'd do the one in the evenings. Getting up that early is freaking tough. But then I'm glad I'm up.

I'm indecisive today.

Speaking of indecisive, I've been thinking about the next thing I'll try. It probably should be riding a bike.

But here's the thing: I don't own a bike, or have access to a bike. Or a helmet, for that matter, and there is no way I am getting on a bike without a helmet. Getting to a bike might take me some time. And I have visions of falling off it and then fucking up my chances to run a good marathon. Stranger things have happened.

I want to see if any bike shops would be interested. I want to pitch it as more of an article too, I need to get on that.

Okay, today is a rambling kind of post. I'll think of it as a freewrite for the other writing I'm about to start.

Maybe after lunch.

Happy July!

Today is July 1st. It is (was?) the birthdate of both my late uncle and my late grandfather. If you're out there, reading or watching, hey there and I'm sorry we had such strange relationships, respectively.

Anyway, onto rowing. Today was a good day!

I don't know why, I woke up this morning just dying to go back to bed. I was talking to one of my fellow classmates on if it's easier to get up early on Monday or Wednesday. We both agreed that Monday was ever so slightly easier. As I'm typing, I'm kind of thinking...maybe it's this: Easier to get up on Monday, but easier to row on Wednesday?

Today was windier out there, so harder to keep the boat level. And when not everyone is rowing, when we row in pairs and fours (described in a sec), you have to work harder at keeping the boat level. Your oar has to float, flat, on top of the water.

I was watching my oar lying flat this morning, when I wasn't rowing, and it came to me: Like frosting a cake. When you get the flat spatula/icing knife loaded with icing but have to maintain a flat edge to make the cake appear seamless...that is sorta what it's like. Stay flat, even, smooth...it helps everyone else on the boat.

When I get out there I sometimes wonder if I'm going to get seasick. It's not bad, but it's a little topsy turvy and unbalanced. It's also so strange--not bad, just odd--to see the river from three inches above it. I see runners like a speck, much in the same way as a runner, I'd see rowers like a speck. Nifty. I feel very much a part of Morning On The Portland Waterfront, no matter what I'm doing. And I like that.

I realized that driving there and driving home--I think I like mornings because I like avoiding other people, and mornings are when you can usually do that. Hee.

(this is what happens when you go and get coffee in the middle of a post. where the hell was I?)

So today I was in Seat 6 for most of the time. It went really well, I thought. The guy who doesn't know what he's doing was behind me, phew. I don't mean to sound like a bitch, but at least I know I'm not wrong for thinking what I think when I hear him get called out on going too fast or stuff like that. I should be nicer, okay, I'll stop.

Anyway, it was a good row, though I later learn that seats 5&6 are actually the easiest seats on the boat, so of course paranoid me is thinking "I got put there because I need the easy seat!" But then I got pulled out to let other people switch off, but then got put back in again at seat 1 because the woman there was having back issues. That seemed really easy, so I dunno. On one hand I kind of want the challenge of seat 8. That is supposed to be the toughest, but it's also the most kind of...topsy-turvy, so you need good balance. I don't know if I am coordinated enough. But I had good, consistent strokes.

I kind of like this stuff. It's fun.

But dear lord! it is early. And rowers are tough. I don't know that I'm tough enough.

Part of this is, I would like to be a natural at something.

I think in what I try, part of me wants to succeed, immensely and immediately. I totally have no patience. I want to be a natural. I want to be more than that; I want to be a prodigy. Some weird, supernatural talent that's immediately identified.

I learned I wasn't a natural at the drums. At least not natural enough for me to run right out and buy a drum set--not to mention the conundrums (hee! -drums. conundrii?) of where to put it and with what money? So yeah.

I'm not like that with running. But I enjoy the hell out of it. And I can say I have improved immensely since I first started doing it. But I'm not a natural. The fact w/running is that I ding my body up so much doing something which should be natural--it is a pretty good indication that I'm not a natural runner! I would also have to be shaped differently, long legs instead of a long torso. Trust, tall & thin does not a runner make. I can't tell you how many times I've been lapped by short chunky people.

But running is teaching me that effort matters, too. I once wrote something for my running club publication about how running's one of the only things where my level of effort exceeds my achievement. Previously I wouldn't have kept doing something that I wasn't great at. But I do it. And what's weirdest is that I enjoy it. I enjoy that growth. I don't know if that's because of maturity or because of running. but I do it.

With the rowing, I wonder if this is something I could be a natural at. This probably sounds really narcissistic, but what the hell. I enjoy it so far (save the early and the drudgery of getting the boat and oars etc. down to the water). I'm always kind of apprehensive at first, but then I like it once we're out there. Maybe that's okay--a healthy respect for the prospect of tipping over is kind of a good thing, yes?

Wow, that caffeine is hitting me. I feel almost like I'm still in the boat!

And when I was leaving, walking through the parking lot, one of the women in my class stopped me and complimented my rowing! She was saying that I looked really good out there (she was in the boat alongside us), and then said something like "Yeah, I was looking at you and thinking 'I want to be behind her!'" and then we laughed. It was really nice to hear and I'm sure it was genuine.

I hope next week's rows feel that good, and that I don't forget everything by Monday. It kind of picked me up for the day. Sure, I've had some professional setbacks lately, and have been down about those (hey at least I still have a job), but hearing that really made me feel good.

If only I could remember her name.