Just another manic Monday

Yesterday I went to the track to watch my riding buddy try out her new custom track bike (believe me, orders of magnitude cooler than mine). Since Jeremy will never be able to use my nice camera to take pictures of me, here's what I would look like if I were hot and redheaded:



I like this picture because I got some decent motion blur on the background:



Erika riding a mini-pace line with her boyfriend, a professional track cyclist. See how close he is? That's the way you do it:



And Erika on the 45 degree turn:



And now for something completely random, apparently Dexter has made a new friend:



This morning Ariel come over and I pride myself on having gotten out of bed at 6:00 7:00 to greet her. We had a quiet morning waiting for Satellite Auto Glass to come by again. I had gotten a new windshield two weeks ago and within 10 days it already had an 8" crack in it. Dad said, "You should have gotten it after ski season," but really, we do do the occasional highway driving and that's where we got a tiny nick right on the side that spread. And Satellite was completely and totally AWESOME and replaced the windshield even though they (and my Dad) could see the tiny impact to show it was not a stress fracture or installation defect. Satellite - two thumbs up!!!

After the car had sat for an hour, we drove to the bookstore and I picked up a copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for bookclub. I took the kids to the rocket ship park and read. First they played on the rock and Ariel said she was stuck on top. I reminded her of the little monkey rule - you need to get down whatever you get up (the corollary being, if you can't get up, you don't belong up). She figured it out.



Next she followed the boys up the rocket ship and then got hysterical when she couldn't get down. I kept send Alex up to help her but she was to upset to even listen to him. When another dad offered to go up and help her, I realized I would have to get off my butt and do something. I talked her down but didn't touch her and everyone at the park thanked me for putting an end to her screaming.



We stayed for about 2 hours, then went to Wendy's for lunch. I guess Ariel doesn't eat there often because she kept saying, "There's no chicken nugget's at Dee-Dee's house." Everyone had nuggets and french fries and then split an M&M/cookie dough frosty. How far we've sunk.