bikes and books are heaven in this life

Holy smokes everything's so awesome.

I just got back from a night run. Night running is my new favorite! I'm reading this book right now, courtesy of Phil Germakian (Shout out!) called, Born to Run. It's AMAZING. And thanks to Phil's living example and this book he's lent me, my concepts about running and just life and the universe has totally expanded. It's amazing. It's raining tonight and I didn't get home till 9pm. Old narrow Erica would have thought, "oh no, it's late and wet!" But new Erica was like, no matter the conditions, you must run! And it was crazy amazing! I ran easy for a while, then medium-hard, and then jogged back home.

I'm just so excited about it that I had to tell the interweb.

Running in the rain is the most amazing thing. I love it. It wasn't raining that hard, it was perfect amounts of rain. And I passed by an outdoor track that's near my house and I couldn't resist stopping in to go a few laps, and the falling rain was glittering because the big stadium lights were all on. It was so beautiful. And I was wearing a cap so no rain in my eyes. Running in the rain is annoying when I have no cover.

Also, I went to EMS to get winter running pants (EMS is not the place to go for that apparently) and on the way out I stopped in the climbing area just for fun, and I looked at the chalk bags even though I'm a bit stubborn about keeping the plastic baggy the chalk sock came in. Why should I buy a chalk bag when the bag it came in functions just as well? (No Impact Man!) Well, I've been amazingly stubborn about it and have been using the plastic bag for over 3 months now. Everyone else at the climbing gym uses a cloth bag. Except my one friend from California and he uses a Barnes and Nobles shopping bag! West Coast hippies! Love it. Well, I had SUCH a great conversation with Sam, the EMS sales guy that I bought a chalk bag.

Sam, the EMS sales guy is actually an aeronautics engineer, AKA rocket scientist. He just got his MBA as well. So... what the F are you doing selling stuff at EMS??? You must REALLY love to climb and be poor. He said he was having a hard time finding a job because the job market is bad. Damn. I feel very lucky to have a job when even rocket scientists have to sell sports equipment. Granted, working at EMS kind of looks maybe a little fun... :)

AND I just got A Walk West, in the mail today, the sequel to A Walk Across America, a super awesome true account of this guy, Peter Jenkins and his adventures walking from upstate New York down to New Orleans. And just when you think it's over, he ends his first book by saying, and then we keep walking all the way to Oregan!! What?! So I'm very excited to read that as soon as I finish, Born to Run.

AND, I got a dress from Abercrombie.com that I saw about a year ago for $100 marked down to $20. Woot! That's the most amazing sale ever! It's SO amazing that I'm actually admitting here in print that I not only went to he Abercrombie website but actually bought something from them. The excitement of the bargain far surpasses my shame of supporting trash bourgeois America.

AND I got my weekly New Yorker in the mail tonight too. Such an exciting mail day for me!

AND EMS wasn't a total wash because I got a long pair of climbing pants so now when I got the rock gym, which is freezing and terribly heated, I won't freeze! Yay!

AND the Brooklyn Friends School craft fair is this weekend and I'm sharing a table with the other first grade assistant and I am going to draw kids on the spot as my craft! YAY! I'm very excited and got a bunch of papers and new pens this past Monday night. I've been practicing at school, making little drawings of the kids when Laura is teaching a lesson. They are so cute, if I do say so myself. Laura is very optimistic that they will be a hit. I hope I make enough money to buy a guitar!!

OH, PS: I'm learning how to play the guitar! The music teacher at school taught me a few chords at school and she lent me her guitar for the long 5 day Thanksgiving vacation and I practiced everyday and I made up this really cute song about pie, that I then played for my class the following Monday and they loved it!! They wanted to sing it over and over and then the next day, one of them came up to me and said, I sang your pie song for my mom! I could die! How cute is that?! I know like... 10 chords now. My goal... learn them ALL. :)

AND.... now I'm asleep.... zonk...

I was riding the F train tonight to get to the East Village and I got a $50 ticket for having my feet up on the seat in front of me! Outrageous. I'm sitting there, reading my book, and a cop comes in and tells me to get out. I'm like... me? The car is almost completely empty. I protest, it's not fair! How am I supposed to know that's illegal??? He's like, the law is written up on a list next to the booth. I say, nobody reads that thing! He smiles because he knows I'm right!! He writes me a ticket, and people are walking by me like I've just mugged someone. A police office is writing me a ticket for pete's sake! A man with a small child walks by and gives me a glare and I shout, "I'm not a bad person! I just put my feet up!"

I start to cry. I can't stop. I have to sit down. I sit on the bench. The next train comes and the conductor looks out the window at me; this pathetic crying girl with a ticket. He asks me what happened. I wail, "I had my feet up!" He shakes his head in sympathy and pulls away. I sit there for a while because I'm too stunned to move and I don't want to be crying on the train. There's almost no one on the platform. Then the same cop busts another woman for the same thing. I leave before he can issue the ticket. She didn't have ID on her so he has to go look it up somewhere while his cohort stands guard over her like she's a criminal.

This is totally unjust. They are clearly just picking out easy victims in almost empty cars so that there won't be like 20 people they have to bust at once. That'd be unmanageable. They don't teach other people not to put their feet up because there are almost no witnesses. When I got out of the train, no one in the car knew, including myself, why he was calling me out. So he's not making an example of me. All they're doing is making easy money off of regular people.

Fuck the police.

I went to a black tie event last night; 2nd time in my life. Walking there to meet my "date" I thought about how my mom said when she was about to immigrate to America she had no idea how hard life would be here and her main concern was that she didn't have a pretty dress to wear. She had this image that in America everyone was wealthy and they do fancy stuff all the time, like black tie events.
My mom never went to any fancy parties in America when she was my age. Although I think these black tie events are pretty artificial and bizarre, I feel grateful and privileged to live such a comfortable life with a diverse array of choices. I feel deep gratitude and respect for all the sacrifices my mom made for me so that I could have a better life.

I'm reading this book, A Walk Across America, by Peter Jenkins and I'm currently completely possessed by the idea of getting a Malamute. OMG. I need a backyard. Where... where to get a backyard. I'd move to New Jersey just to get a Malamute. I have to get all my extended travel in in the next year so that when I come back I can go straight to settling down in one place with a big yard with my Malamute.

DREAM!

yup!   It was awesome.

I tried to cook garbonzo beans from SCRATCH.  Garbonzo beans are basically rocks.  They take forever to cook and while you underestimate the time they need to cook, EVERYTHING else in your pot is turning to mush.  Then like an idiot, if you decide for some reason, MILK needs to go in there, that will burn and turn the pot black.  

Grrr....  

Well, now I know.  Immediately after this debacle, I set aside another batch of beans in a bowl of water.  Gonna soak them and look at them again tonight.  

BEANS!  I want to eat you!!!

 

In the last entry I wrote about how we brainstormed community service ideas.  I forgot to mention that the last suggestion was "Do bike."  
That was his phrasing and that's how I recorded it because I am all about authenticity. 

Well.  Naturally, I thought that was an awesome idea and an awesome way to put it.  "Do Bike!"  Genius.  I forgot about it until later that week when we had our lower school assembly where grades K-4 got together to announce their ideas.  We had like 15 ideas down on our rainbow slice and I had written their ideas down in whole sentences.  For example:  We shouldn't cut down trees, only trim their branches."  And so on.
I also did not realize we were only supposed to say 2 of our ideas until we were already all seated.  So I whispered to the two kids I had chosen, "We can only pick two of them, so pick two that you like."  I trusted them to make a good decisions.  They were two of the most competent students.

Then all the other classes go and I realize all their ideas are one word sound-bites, like, "medicine,"  "care for homeless animals,"  "education."    But I thought, so what.  It doesn't matter if ours is not a sound-bite.  

Our class went last.  I had no idea what they were going to say.  One says, "Don't use plastic bottles."  Great, I agree.  Then the other shouts REAL LOUD, right into the microphone: "DO BIKE!"  Everyone laughs and I laugh because that's funny.  It was awesome.  Obviously, none of the other teachers liked it.  They were all giving disapproving stares and raising their two fingers in the 'let's have silence' signal.  But I was thinking, yes!  My kid was not some monotone, shy, embarrassed drone!  There was conviction and passion behind his words!   7 years old and he made me believe!  DO BIKE!  

DO BIKE!

Even that night I felt a surge of pride as I remembered it before I fell blissfully to sleep.
 

Today my class had a little brainstorming session about what we can do to help our communities.  In the first grade you're still trying to get a sense of what community means.  The 2nd grade collects all these pennies and then they use them for a good cause.  They take suggestions from the other grades on what that cause should be. 

Me:  What do you think we can do to make our neighborhoods a better place?  Not just for our own families, but for other people too?

S:  We can stop war.
Me:  OK.  I agree that war is not good and we shouldn't have them.  But a war is not happening in Brooklyn right now and I don't think one will happen soon.  What else do you think we could do?
E:  Get rid of our neighbors.  Because they annoy me.
Me:  OK...  Neighbors can be annoying.  But I bet they're only like that because they have no friends or they don't feel like people like them.
E:  Yeah, they only hang out with each other.
Me:  OK!  So what can we do to make those grumpy neighbors more happy and friendly?
O:  Don't use plastic bottles.
Me:  Yes, we shouldn't buy plastic bottles.  (What about the neighbors?)
A:  Don't throw garbage.
Make the world peaceful.
Me:  Can you be more specific?  How can we use our pennies to make the world more peaceful?
A:  Like make it more peaceful.. and clean.. because it's a mess.

This goes on for like 5 more minutes.  I've definitely had much more fruitful and focused conversations than this one with 6 year olds, but I don't know what's going on here.

And then this amazing suggestion:

G:  Don't flush the toilet so much because it's wasting water.

Everyone shouts, "EW!!"  and holds their noses and acts very tickled but disgusted by this. 
To which I respond in all seriousness, "I agree."  This really takes many of them by surprise.  The teacher is not supposed to allow bathroom talk so what is this??
Me:  "I do that at home.  And there's a saying about that, 'If it's yellow then it's mellow but if it's brown then flush it down."  They all understood.
"Just imagine:  I have a toilet and you all have toilets and everyone in America and almost everyone has a toilet or a few!  Imagine all that water every time you flush!  That's wasting our precious water.  It's not gross. It's saving water."

If any parents challenge me then I'm ready to defend my curriculum. 

WOOT!

Who knew?  Who in the heck is Lee Pace?  My new boyfriend that's who.  Also, the little girl in the movie is the CUTEST thing EVER!!  omg.  Could hardly tolerate it.  It's mystical, it's magical, it's love and life.  It's awesome.

Also, I'm hitting newer and higher and tougher goals every time I go climbing now!  Yesterday I was tired from not getting enough sleep for the past week, but I still conquered new routes and had basically an awesome time.  I got home at 9:30.  OY!  Too late!  What is wrong with me!  When I'm climbing I feel so in the moment; it's hard to remember to look at a watch.  

GRRR!!!  I'm gonna get anchor tattoos on my new pop-eye forearms!! 

JK.  That's gross... 

or is it...

----

When I was in high school and was having a tough time, I would shake my fist in the air and lament, "When's my time?!"
One time my best friend at the time, Margaret, casually replied, "Maybe this is your time.  Maybe your time just sucks."  

Although an amazing response to my whine, I have to say, she was wrong.  THIS is my time, 28yo and on is my time and it ROCKS so hard.  I can't waste it blogging!  I'm out!

OMG.  Amazingly impassioned and crazy and emotional and Terry Gross was SO uncomfortable.  Tracey Jordan is amazing! 

Well, I went to the 350.org climate change demonstration in Time's Square yesterday for the international day for climate change.  I was pretty disappointed.  It was a pretty small turn out and they were passing out these big paper signs to everyone which everyone was going to immediately throw away.  Paper waste = hypocrisy.  In my opinion.  

The MC would shout such things as, "Will we settle for 360?"  To which about 30 people would shout, "NO!"
I just couldn't get into it.  The paper waste!  These mammary type mascots were walking around.  It didn't feel at all effective. I know they are "raising awareness" on the issue, but are there still people out there who are not aware that there is a climate crisis going on??  

-----

I also went climbing with my good Bank Street teacher friend Phil, which was pretty awesome because Phil is a total climbing beast and showed me a thing or two about tuffness and buffness.  GRRRR.  Then we drank beers and smashed the cans on our foreheads.  

heehee.  Juuuust kidding. :)

I hit a bunch of new landmarks climbing.  Every time I go I make microscopic improvements but yesterday was like a major day for me.  I hit the top of a bunch of new routes, even routes that I had never tried before!  I did some tough routes that I didn't think I could do.  Phil helped with the moral support, shouting, and validations.  Thanks Phil!

Then we ate vegan food at The V Spot which is my new favorite and I took a new route biking home, which was kind of a poor idea because it was night time and thus dark, and raining.  So of course I got lost.  But it turned out pretty awesome because there is nothing more magical than the abandoned cobblestone streets of the warehouse areas under the Manhattan bridge on a rainy night.  There's the eerie silence of the empty night, and at the same time there's the roar of the traffic on the bridge so so many feet above me.  The mist, the river, the reflective pools of light on the patchy concrete and cobblestone puddles and Manhattan on the other shore.  

There are certainly more magical things, but at that time, I sure couldn't think of any.

I eventually made it home.  

I love riding in the night after a rain.  

 

 

 

But I still love it and keep reading it.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Almost every secret is my own.  Except the ones about suicide or peeing on your dog etc.  Yikes. 
But most of them are simple truths about love, loss, joy and suffering; the human condition.

After reading that blog I'd have to say my postsecret for the day is: I feel all emo now....

And I pray every day.

Bear Mountain is my new favorite mountain!  And I've been to a lot of mountains. 

My new most awesome roomy and I and a bunch of other people went to Bear Mountain over the weekend and it was so awesome!  It was perfect weather and everything was perfect and we went up all these boulders and paths that we weren't supposed to go up and it was too much fun.  We met some folks who were actually working on building the Appalachian Trail, or something like that...  They were so woodsy, we were all very impressed.  We made friends with them for a bit then we hiked on.  Beautiful views, beautiful everything.  So nice :)

Now I'm going to Korean class.  I'm kind of losing some steam on the learning Korean thing.  It's getting tuff.  There are so many new words to memorize and I'm really busy with work and it's hard to find the time to finish this curriculum that was due LAST spring (oy!) and climb, which I'm making slow progress on, and I haven't done any drawing in like weeks!  I also barely have time to read my latest book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  I'm about 100 pages in and it's so good.  Sigh.  So much to do and so little time :)

I cannot believe I didn't know about this until today.   

http://www.climateride.org/

You bike from NYC to DC and then get a personal meeting with your senator to talk climate.  It started 2 days ago and ends in 2 days!!  It's happening right now and I'm not on it!!!   
GRRRR.

I just got the link for this on my new favorite blog:

http://noimpactman.typepad.com

So inspiring.  So radical.  So right on.  

Also:  I rode the NYC Century 2 weeks ago.  Was it 2 weeks ago?  I can't remember.  It was pretty darned awesome and way better than I expected!  I really thought the borough tours that I did were not very good, but this was way less crowded, and I saw so much of NYC that I had never seen before.  Like the beach!  WTF?  There's so much beach!  And I met some cool tuff guy bikers.  Grr.   Tuffness.

I'll put pictures up some day.  Sigh.  When I have TIME.  haha.

Tuffness phase 2: rock climbing.  Doing more of that.  Tuffness in progress.  

Falling less.  Hanging on more.  

Bike thieves are the lowest people.  We know that.
Today i saw a dude trying to snap off a lock for the first time.  He was using these giant bolt cutters and people were pausing to look but walked on by.  I paused, looked, then a yard away I stopped and said, "I'm calling the police." 

And he walked away!!! 

He hid his bolt cutters and walked around the corner to another bike and biked away! 

I'm proud I stopped evil today.  I felt very John McClain in Die Hard.  Even better, Die Harder.  OMG.  Best title for a movie EVER.

(I've had so much I want to write about but we STILL don't have interweb at the new place!  Busy busy plus no interweb at home = no posts)

We had this great girl in 1B (my first grade class) last year.  She's in 2nd grade now and this morning her mom came to visit and said she had to share this with us;

"M has been having a hard time this week with being in 2nd grade and realizing it's NOT 1B anymore.  She said this morning, 'I wish I had never been in 1B so I wouldn't have known the AWESOMENESS of Erica and Laura.'"


COULD YOU JUST DIE?!?!   I died! 
What a great way to start my day.  Love love love last year's class. 
This year's pretty great too :p

More writing later!  I have so much I want to write but now I have to manage these photos for curriculum night!  Eep! So busy!!!

Yay!  It was fun to see everyone again and get back into a classroom that I'd been in before!  Every year I've taught I've walked into a brand new room.  It was REALLY nice to go back somewhere familiar.  The head of school showed us a slideshow of his summer woodworking.  It was like watching old grandpa going off about his crazy adventures at a mundane hobby.  Love that guy, so awesomely weird.  

I got the teacher I work with a TOASTER for her birthday, which was just a few days ago and it was awesome!  I was so excited to give it to her because ALL last year, so many mornings she'd be like, "I'm starved!  I just wish I had some toast!"  She loves toast.  I love toast too.  So now we can have toast at school in the morning!  Wee!!!

I told my gentleman friend that I found my college boyfriend's girlfriend's blog online and it was full of really explicit things about his life and their relationship.  My gentleman friend said to me, "So what are you going to do?"

"Do?"  Am I supposed to do something?  Then he brought it to my attention that ex-boyfriend might not know that his private life is being exposed to the masses on the interweb, and he has a right to know.

Now... what to do....  What if it just mortifies him more to know that I read it?  Would ignorance be better for him?  Maybe he does know about it and doesn't care....  I don't know...  He's the one who cut off contact with me so it's really not my place to go butting into his life again.  I don't know...

I'm moving tomorrow!!  Ack!!! 

 Weezer's got a new single and it ROCKS.  I've been dancing all morning to it!!  And singing at the top of my lungs.  It's perfection!

http://www.weezer.com/

Please listen to it and just rock out all over.  This is an order.

Interestingly, I don't get my weezer updates from their site.  I get them from their uber-#1 fan, Alec Longstreth and his blog.  Ha!  He's usually pretty prompt but he f'ed up his RSS feed and wasn't getting Weezer blog updates for like a month, but now he's back on track!   

Rock on Weezer
Rock on Longstreth

What's funny about the universe is that everything you do matters and nothing you do matters.
That's true about everything.  And nothing.

Ha!  TRUTH.

I just saw a movie that made me remember that everything in life is just a story; with a beginning and an end.  Everything!  Everything that's ever happened!  So is this dispassion?  Have I thus reached enlightenment?  Is there a certificate?  I'd like to flag it on my facebook.  

Oh, mention of facebook revokes enlightenment certificate.  

All my boyfriends were movies.  My childhood was a movie.  My friends are supporting actors in my movie.  I'm in their movies.  Blogging is a movie.  Sex is a movie.  A "special" kind of movie.  (teeheeheehee).

In this mindset I can kind of look back on my life, or live my life in the present, as a spectator.  I'm not involved in the goings on and instead of entangling myself in events, I am merely amused.  I'm amused by the happy and sad and everything else.  

I had a fight tonight with my gentleman friend.  (It's ironic that I'm writing this because I just told him I never write about him.  Doesn't matter anyway.  Refer to first sentence.)  The short of it is that if I love him freely, he gets scared and distant.  This has happened A LOT.  So I was being non-committal.  And actually, I liked that.  It was the best.  I was totally free to live as an individual but at the same time I had the love and support of someone I love.  Best!  It's too hard for an outsider to understand, just go with it.  So I was quite happy.  Happier than I had been in years with a man.  Then I got closer and he backed away and we had a fight on the phone about it tonight.  

Afterwards,  I just felt surprisingly at ease.  I should be feeling restless and angry.  We are in a fight.  We might not smooch again.  Oh...  Maybe this movie is just over.   I'm just watching this movie, and maybe it's over.  Another one will start soon.  Movies run 24/7 on this station.  Everything on this channel is good!  

Erica-mukti my friends.  Erica-liberation.   

Ooohh, the next show is "Erica sleeps."  Fascinating.  Let's watch.....

 I'm at Joyce Bakeshop, the cutest little place to sit for hours on a $1.75 tea in a mason jar.  There are babies and toddlers everywhere!  WTF is happening to this place?  A baby was just screaming at the top of it's lungs for like 10 minutes till the mom was shamed into leaving.  The whole time she was talking to the baby but CLEARLY addressing the adult patrons.  

mom says way too loudly for a baby that's right next to her face, "Oh honey, you're a grumpy one aren't ya? Aren't ya?  Oh, baby, I'm sorry, I'm almost done.  I'm almost DONE.  Mommy HAD to come here though.  I HAD to run this errand.  We're going any second now baby."

Nice work lady, but we see right through you.  Now all these toddlers are running around and are still at least a year away from volume control.  They're pretty cute, but come on!  I'm writing my personal statement for this Fulbright teaching in Korea thing and all I can think is, "You wanna be the baby?  No, I'm the baby!  Waaa, waaaahh!!  HAHAHA!  No!  That's not how!  Burp, burp, burp burp (ad infinitum).  I'm a baby!"

Yes, you are both the baby.  Now mom has come with the most ginormous baked good and has literally shut their cake-holes.  

Why are there so many babies?  B/c DUH, what am I thinking?  Who's free at 10am in the morning?  House-moms.  

This is good inspiration for my statement writing.  Certainly.  

Oh man, watching toddlers chew is like the cutest freaking thing EVER.  OMG. omg.