Run. Dog. Cat. Cat. Me.

They’re at it again.

“Heather” and “Becky” are in rare form today.  “H” got a new bike and you’d think she was a 12-year-old with her new “Monkees” album.

For your listening pleasure click here.

I’d put my Monkees 45’s and a towel in the basket of my Schwinn Stingray and meet Anna at Chris’s house to swim.  Chris would pipe the Monkees from her parent’s stereo to the outside speakers.  This was a whole new world to me.  You could listen to music outside.  Crazy.  We’d discuss which we wanted to marry.  I liked Michael Nesmith the best but he was already married and even at 12 I felt a bit guilty about possibly being the cause of their divorce so I decided to settle on Peter Tork.  I wrote him a fan letter.  I asked him to send me a picture standing outside his house.  I had a mental picture of him opening the letter, calling a friend to come over and take a picture for him, getting them back from Walgreen’s and shipping one off to me.  I think the picture must have gotten lost in the mail.

Sweet.

H. is quite pleased with herself – she got shoes and clips and practiced at B’s house last night, clipping in and out.  I feel vaguely jealous, like Peter sent her a picture and not me.

Evidently none of us had real pressing business to take care of this morning since chat was flying back and forth.

After comparing schedules (for the record:  I do not miss back to school shopping, back to school supplies, back to school PTA meetings, or back to school anything) H & B came up with the completely hair brained idea of riding bikes this afternoon.

*BOINK*

—  what are you two talking about? riding a bike, like for real, outside? are you nucking futs??

–  YES OUTSIDE and YES we are nucking futs.

— I hate you both

– And we love you, too.

– Terri…oh TERRI…are you going to come out to play?

So – they’re going to ride this afternoon.  I was going to ride too, and even considered putting the lollipops back on my bike and trying to clip.  As B said, the guy at the bike shop always says it’s not if you fall on the bike, it’s when.  After I tipped over about three seconds after a pickup truck passed me and I watched the tire that would have driven over my head recede into the distance I went home, removed the pedals and put the sissy pedals back on.  Now, two or three years later, I’m still in sissy pedals.  Since I’m trying to be the kind of woman who becomes more open-minded as I age, rather than less, I guess I need to quit being a clip-hater.

Watching videos from Lay Toor while considering riding in clips is probably a bad idea.

Then I made the mistake of texting The Exorcist.  I ran yesterday for the first time in a while and it was so great.  Two slow miles, but basically nothing hurt.  My legs felt fresh, a bit of hip flexor tightness and toward the end of the run a little twinge in the piriformis.  This morning, however:  A PITA, with twinges and little spasms into the hamstrings and calves.  No bike riding.  No running.  I can swim if I don’t go all Olympic on it.  No danger of that, the only thing happening when I swim is the possibility of going down like the Titanic.

I knew something didn’t feel right.

In the end I bagged it all and did the Grandma Alice thing:  took a nap.  Murphy didn’t need to decide to take a nap.  He loves this heat – stretched out in the sun for hours, occasionally asking to come in for a drink – when I pet him, his fur is hot.  Chunk is feeling much better after the kidney stone/bladder crystals/UTI and has some of her feisty back, but she settled in next to me and put her soft little paw on my arm and purred.  I can always sink or swim tomorrow.