Random Randomness and Then Some Tunes

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."  - Albert Einstein

Moxie learned how to ride her bike the fall of last year. I came home from work and she was zipping up and down the street like a she had never experienced freedom before. It was delightful to sit on my porch and watch her cruise up and down the sidewalk like a boss, wind blowing through her hair.

Then she fell.

Her bike was parked in the garage, where it stayed for the better part of nine months. I would try and get her to get back on it, but she would make all sorts of excuses "I likes my scooter more better Mom. I can go WAY faster on it" never getting back on the bike that had bucked her off like a wild bronco.

And that's the way we rolled. Moxie refusing to ride her bike. We even bought her a new one to see if that would encourage her, but the new one sat in the garage parked right next to the weathered old bike. Sad and neglected.

She likes to come with me when I go on my morning walks. You know, to keep me company so I don't get lonely.

And to scare away the bears.

Cause there's many bears in suburbia, right?

I finally told her at the beginning of this month that she couldn't come with me on our morning walks any more if she wasn't going to ride her bike. She would hum and haw, giving me all sorts of excuses as to why she shouldn't have to ride her bike.

That's when I Tiger Momed her.

I made her ride her bike. I pulled the bike out of the garage, hid her scooter and made her get on the bike and ride it.

Truthfully, it was the longest walk of my life. She whined, cried and made the walk just plain miserable. She would stop about every 25 feet and get off and start to walk and I would promptly make her get back on the bike and ride a little further. Two miles never seemed longer.

But, towards the end of the first mile something wonderful happened. She found her confidence again.

She started riding further and further way from me, to the point that she was so far ahead all I could see was a tiny speck.

She would eventually stop and wait for me to catch up, cockily yelling "Hurry up, Mom! You're walking so slow!"

And my heart swelled with joy.

Confidence meet Moxie. 

 Sometimes we fall, get scraped up, beat up and lose our confidence. And if we let that defeat conquer us it will rule us. Sometimes we just need someone to Tiger Mom us, take us by the hand and make us do that one thing that scares us most.

Sometimes we need someone to show us that in reality, we had nothing to fear and everything to lose. By getting lost in the fear, we were missing out on freedom. And the feel of the wind blowing our hair.

***
Football season has started again. Thing 2 has been at the park every evening for the past week running plays and practicing with his Dad, his buddy and his buddies Pop. The Dad's run interference while the boys run plays, fine tuning their skills, creating trust between the two players. Players have to trust each other that they each are going to do their jobs. When the players trust one another that they have each others backs is when it makes for great football.

Jefe comes home from their nightly workouts dog tired. And happy.

Thing 2? He's just happy to be back doing what he loves.

The boy will never be an NFL Player. That's me being honest, not mean, and the boy knows this. He has a healthy sense of self preservation, which is why letting him play football has been no big deal to us. If it comes right down to completely sacrificing his body or losing the play the body wins and the play loses. And, I'm OK with that.

***

I sat at the park last night watching the boys play their game. Clapping when Thing 2 would catch a difficult pass and moaning when he wouldn't.

My little girls were having races to the farthest point on the field that they dared run, having me time them to see could run faster. The sun had turned the sky a brilliant color of orange, and I felt that old familiar feeling settling into my toes. I sighed a heavy sigh, settled back into my chair and found myself thinking "This is damn near perfect. I am living the life and it's a damn good one."

***
So I got in another car wreck this week.

I know. My insurance should be orbiting outer-space what with all the car wrecks we've had. In a two month period Thing 1 had wrecked all three of our cars, Jefe wrecked his newly fixed car and I wrecked the rental car we were driving while the Jeep was getting fixed.

I know, right?

In my defense this accident wasn't my fault. I was turning left in an intersection and a dumb teenage girl ran the red light and ripped my bumper off. I actually didn't know that it was as bad as it was because it felt like I got a little bump, like maybe she had just scraped the front of my vehicle. However, after I followed her through the intersection (chased would be the more appropriate word. she was going so fast, and kept on going that I actually thought she was going to flee the scene) and got out to call 911 did I see the utter destruction of my vehicle.

I chastised myself because I was heading to Bajio's to get me a salad and then over to the park to listen to the Huey Lewis and The News concert. "Maybe if I had just turned right instead of left this wouldn't have happened." But, after thinking long and hard about it, I realized that had I turned right, coupled with the speed this silly girl was going, this minor accident could have been quite tragic. She had 3 other minors in the car -- two of whom were in the back seat, not wearing seat belts.

She had very little damage to her vehicle, but mine? Yeah. My bumper was sitting on the road. When the police got there to handle the accident, they wanted us to move out of the intersection to a nearby parking lot. I had to drive like I was a decrepit old lady because I was PUSHING my bumper along with me. It was being held onto the car by one lonely, sad bolt.

Jefe showed up to save me and all he had in the trunk of his car was his Lanyard for his volunteer job. So my sad little van was being held together with a CASA Lanyard.

Towny Much?

I couldn't drive it around because when he first tied the bumper back onto the van it was all snug like. But after driving it to run kids hither and yon, it was starting to drag on the ground again.

My only hope this time around is that it takes less than 98 days to fix my vehicle. Which is how long it took to get the Jeep fixed.

I'm not bitter about that at all.

And I shouldn't be. I mean I DID get to drive a brand, spanking new, just off the lot 2013 Mini Van for 98 days. It was a lean, mean driving machine. Why would I be bitter?

Because we're still dealing the fallout of that mess.

I freaking hate cars sometimes.

***

That's all she wrote peeps. I hope your weekend is going to be as epic as mine. I've got a lovely nap in the hammock in my near future. Keep it classy, Internet!



1. Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
2. Got It Alone - Beck
3. Horchata - Vampire Weekend
4. Love Lost - Temper Trap
5. Sad Sad City - Ghostland Observatory
6. All of Me - Tanlines
7. Bury Us Alive - STRFKR
8. Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men
9. Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones
10. Polish Girl - Neon Indian

Bonus: Blurred Lines - Robin Thicke