Time to tidy up. The house, the bathroom mats, the coffee maker. The dish rack, the porch tables, the scattered stuff that you ignore 95% of the time and hate to look at the remaining 5. Ed laughs that I do this when my younger girl is about to make an appearance. Well, I need some excuse, because we are, otherwise, not motivated. I like neatness. I like tidiness. If I had a cleaning service, I'd be happy to let them wipe the baseboards and dust picture frames weekly. But for me to take the time to do that level of house care routinely -- well, I'd have to be pretty bored with my waking hours to do that. And I'm not bored.
But, daughter is coming and so, as always, I am motivated to at least do some things that I do believe must be attended to on a regular, if infrequent, basis.
Of course, this is after lily plucking. The flower buds are now getting far and few in-between. I doubt I'm hitting 300 anymore. Everything is still very lovely, but the mass of flowers in your face is a thing of the past. In August and September, you concentrate on pockets of beauty. Sometimes one flower at a time.
Breakfast, with coffee from a descaled machine, on the yet to be cleaned porch.
Afterwards, I have my very last meeting with Dave, the physical therapist who has coached me through the knee recovery. I read that in some countries, therapy after knee replacements continues for a whole year, but here, you're pretty much done after three months and honestly, this is fine with me. Dave does some final measurements and comes up beaming: you're now at a full 100% straight and your bend is at 133 degrees! Now don't brag about this to other knee replacement people! Most cant get above 125.
So here I am, bragging on Ocean? What gives?
Well, the fact is that I don't have super powers and I am kind of on the old side. I got to 133 I'm sure because I did those super dumb and super boring exercises religiously, since I wanted to be able to travel come summer time. So I'm here to motivate you if you're going through a knee change: stay with the therapy plan and keep to your therapeutic window and you will beat the 125 crowd, I'm sure of it!
In the afternoon we have ourselves a bike saga. I am discouraged by the low availability, nay -- the no availability of usable, charged bikes at my local station. I am ready to do the unfathomable (were you to ask for Ed's opinion): to purchase my own e-bike. Ed uses every strategy known to him to rein me in: let's go to the more distant station. You ride over here, I'll ride it back!
Fine. I take the scooter to a more distant station: same problem. What bikes are there are undercharged. I come home and tell him I am for sure thinking of buying my own bike. And this time he agrees that the supply/demand ratio on B-Cycle bikes skews toward the unreliable, unpredictable level.
I'm ready to look at bikes I've been researching. He offers to go with me, to pull me away from bikes that are not right for me (meaning -- too expensive!). We agree to meet up in the early evening at one of our trusty bikes shops.
But first, I have an event to go to! Snowdrop is finishing the last of her summer programs today (drama: Broadway musicals) and it comes with a performance for parents and sundry others (as always, I am the sundry other!).
It is my favorite of all her camp performances. I am a sucker for children singing in groups -- they bring tears to my eyes! I hear songs that remind us of why we place so much hope in children -- about friendship, hope, about happiness.
It's truly lovely.
Afterwards, I take the girl out for a treat and a read! We have an hour to kill and we settle ourselves at an ice cream shop just off the Capitol Square. She eats, I read from the book we're totally loving this month ("Firefly Summer"). It's a lovely moment.
And then I drop her at her brother's school and hurry off to meet up with Ed at the bike shop.
Honestly, I see nothing that is just perfect and hits a reasonable price point. Still, they send us to a sister bike store and there I am tempted.
Very tempted.
But I hold off. Too big of a decision. I'll try picking up a swapped B-Cycle a few more times. But I see the writing on the wall. If I continue to be this enthusiastic about biking, I may eventually succumb to having one here. Reliably. Fully charged and ready to go.
