Mother's Day

On waking up, without even a taste of coffee, I was greeted with "the dishwasher doesn't work anymore." Oh, yay.

But the day got better. My oldest original (pre P-man) kid stopped by to deliver a huge fountain iced tea, a Hershey bar with almonds, a red tulip, a yellow tulip and this card...

the front

middle

inside

How can I even begin to explain how perfect--and funny--this card is? The front...remember this? And then, on 6/6/06 (at 6 AM, I kid you not), I had surgery to remove the fragments of my tailbone. And then, back in March this year, I fell downstairs and bruised my stupid butt again.

No explanation for the left middle.

The right middle though...that's our dining room table (yes, we have a picnic table in our dining room, that is another story...and yes, that toaster on the table is plugged into a heavy duty orange extension cord...the wiring sucketh in this house, we can't make toast and coffee at the same time without blowing a circuit breaker). Anyway, P-man was here for my butt cracking surgery and returned to his work in Mexico a few days later. While lounging on the couch watching movies with the family, I lamented how part of my post op instructions was to check the incision daily and how the hell was I supposed to do that? Ever tried to peer inside your own butt crack? I needed my husband!

Dave stood up and loudly announced, "OK, mom, get up on the table...come on everyone, we'll do this as a family!"

No, I didn't. No, we didn't. But I laughed so hard my ass nearly split open. And "We'll do this as a family!" has become a favorite catch phrase for just about anything.

The bikes? When Dave was really little and his dad and I were still happily married, we bought an old tandem bike. We put a child seat on the back and spent many a day riding through the streets where we lived. Often belting out "We like to ride our bike, our bike. We like to ride our bike. To ride our bike is what we like. We like to ride our bike!" attracting stares. Eh, an entire family on an old tandem bike and loud, bad singing will do that. It was fun.

More recently, though not recently enough, Dave took me on some long, meandering bike rides through town. Not on the tandem--I still have it but it's in poor shape. We'd planned to do the Kal-Haven Trail Blazer a few years ago but it rained and I was wuss. Didn't want to ride 34 miles in the rain. We put it off for the next year. The year I broke my ass. We never made it. I haven't been on a bike since.

That same year, I was supposed to do my third Breast Cancer 3 Day in a row. I had to bow out. I stopped training. I stopped walking. I stopped...wow, this was supposed to be funny.

I need to get back on the bike. I'm 5'3", Dave's over 6'. He's 26, I'm 46. He's young and strong and healthy. I've got RA, way too much extra poundage (how did this happen?), a scarred butt crack and two bad knees. You think I can keep up?

I love that kid.