blind insight

Not another boring first date.

Steve and I met on a Sunday. When he dropped me off at home that night, he asked me if I wanted to get together sometime to go climbing. I did, but I had triathlons the following two weekends, was leaving town for a conference a few hours after completing tri #2, and wasn't planning to climb much in the interim. However, I had pre-existing plans to climb with another friend that Wednesday afternoon, because I had to take off work anyway to let in some workmen. Steve was free that day and didn't mind joining us, so we made a plan.

The day didn't turn out quite as expected. Below is the e-mail I sent out to my circle the following day:
_____________________

From: Mad
To: Everyone I [email protected]
Date: Thursday, July 31, 2003
Re: Why we wear helmets

Forgive the mass e-mail, but I wanted to tell you guys what happened yesterday.

I had taken vacation time for the afternoon to handle some house stuff and go climbing. I got home around noon and got really lucky because both the contractor and the cable dude showed up right on time, so I was able to leave the house by two. Yay! D. picked me up, we headed west to get a new friend, Steve, then drove up to Highwire Crag in Clear Creek Canyon.

Steve led an easy 5.7 sport route, then I led the same route to get my sea legs back after a month off from climbing because of my sprained ankle. I had just touched back down to the ground and was about to untie from the rope when we saw a body come hurtling down from the top of the rock and land - THUD - on the ground about 5 feet away from us.

Steve and D. jumped into action and ran down the tricky approach climb to the road, while I tore the rope out of my harness, ran over to the fallen guy, and tried to get his girlfriend to stop screaming. He was blue in the face and foaming at the mouth, bleeding badly from a gash in the back of his head and lacerations all over his legs and arms. Quickly and carefully, we got his head supported, enabling him to breathe, got some clothes over him to warm him up, and within a few minutes he pinked up, moved his extremities a little, and regained a bit of lucidity. There were three other guys climbing a ways down the crag, and they also came over to help. I concentrated on keeping the guy stable and warm and trying to stop him from moving his head around. I also tried to get his girlfriend to calm down, since she was pretty hysterical.

Meanwhile, D. and Steve had just gotten to the car and were about to drive down the canyon (we were at least 20 minutes from cell service or a land line phone), when they saw a casino bus heading towards Black Hawk. Steve had the good sense to realize that the bus would have a CB radio, so he jumped out of the car and waved it down. The driver called emergency services, and a state trooper happened to be just down the canyon. The trooper radioed for a search/rescue team and then hiked up to where we were. He didn't really do anything for the hurt guy, but at least was able to maintain radio contact with the rescuers and let us know that help was on the way. Within a few minutes, the news helicopters were circling overhead, the troopers had closed off the canyon road (I'm sure pissing off legions of rush hour commuters), and by about 30 minutes after the accident, the EMTs were on-scene. They got the guy on an IV and in a better position, and determined that he was in surprisingly good shape (relatively speaking, that is). Meanwhile the girlfriend started panicking again because their puppy had taken off when the guy fell (we never did find the dog, unfortunately, but it has their phone # on its collar, and there should be climbers in the area today, so hopefully someone will find it soon).

In between the time that the guy fell and the time the EMTs arrived, it started to pour - one of those short, intense afternoon mountain storms, with lightning and even a bit of hail. We had a tarp under our rope, so I whipped it out and we set up a shelter over the hurt guy. I also took everyone's spare clothes and rain jackets and put them over the guy to keep him warm. When the EMTs reached the site, we all stood in the rain, holding the tarp over them while they worked. I managed to crouch under the tarp, holding it up above me, but Steve was holding the IV bag up high and stood patiently in the downpour.

Perhaps 45 minutes after the fall, the Golden Fire Department search/rescue folks arrived. D. and another friend of ours, G., who had arrived on his motorcycle while this was all happening, helped them rig up a pulley system with one of the climbing ropes so they could get their gear up the approach. The rescuers brought up a stretcher and a really cool device to help them lower it down on the rope system. Once they got the guy immobilized and warm, they very slowly lowered him down (partly being carried, partly on the rope system) to a waiting Flight for Life helicopter.

After the approach was clear again, I helped the girlfriend get their backpacks down to the road and went with her to the hospital, while Steve and D. cleaned the couple's climbing gear from the rock (and ours, too) and met me at St. Anthony's a little bit later. The guy was in CAT scan when we left; the ER folks had said he would basically be fine, but had a really close call.

Apparently, the two of them had miscommunicated somethin' awful. He was planning to lower down on the rope, whereas she thought he was going to rappel. I guess she thought he was clipped into the bolts at the top, ready to come off belay and set up his rappel. On the other hand, he thought he would just lean back on the rope and lower down. I'm not sure how they made such a huge mistake, since you ALWAYS decide with your belayer, BEFORE you leave the ground, whether you're lowering or rapping off, but in any event, she took him off belay. So when he leaned back, there was nothing holding him up, and he fell all the way from the top of the route to the ground! Truly horrifying.

What makes this sad story even worse is that (as I learned while riding to the hospital with the girlfriend) they have been climbing together for 3 1/2 years (so they should know their communication routine by now!), they're engaged and supposed to get married on September 6, and yesterday was her birthday. Ugh.

Oh -- and the three other guys up on the crag were DRUNK! When we were all standing together holding the tarp over the guy, I could smell them reeking of booze. They probably thought I was a huge b**ch, but I totally yelled at them and said something like "I hope this reminds you that climbing is dangerous enough, and you can't add to the risk by drinking!"

Anyway, by the time the guys met me at the hospital, it was almost 8 and none of us had eaten all day, so we got some food and tried to stop seeing the body falling from the sky over and over in our minds. It was a hell of a scare, and a big reminder of why you have to be absolutely certain about your protection system in climbing.
___________________________

We later learned that the guy had a serious head injury that took 16 staples to close, two broken legs, a broken shoulder, broken ribs, a punctured lung, countless bruises and lacerations, but no paralysis. He was home from the hospital in less than a week. They finally found the dog that Saturday, four days after the fall. And according to friends of Steve's who (coincidentally) know the couple, they got married last September as planned.

Despite all my whining about hum-drum first dates, I could have done with a little less drama on this one. But I've never before come away from a first date with such a good sense of a guy's strength of character, calm under pressure, and lightning-quick problem-solving ability.

'zackly.

Sometimes, in my journeys around blogland, I encounter someone whose words perfectly echo my thoughts. Rana's comments on someone else's site could have come from my head. Her own blog's pretty cool, too.

Write on.

366 Days.

In December 2002, I got dumped hard, painfully, and unexpectedly. Not long thereafter, I picked up the pieces of my heart and ego and put my patched-together self back on the dating market. I'd been through plenty of splits in the past, but none so painful. Whereas in the past I'd always bounced back quickly and resiliently from breakups, this time I was uncharacteristically bitter and wary.

After a few months of what felt like endless bad or (almost worse) uninspiring blind dates, depressing Jewish singles events, and disappointing forays into online dating, I was about ready to hang up my dating hat and just stop looking for a while. I'd met a few guys who were fun to spend time with, but the majority, particularly those over 35, seemed emotionally stunted, hopelessly self-absorbed, flat-out boring, or so dramatically NOT what they'd held themselves out to be via friends, phone, or Jdate that by the end of an hour they'd blown any chance of ever earning my trust.

Some time in the spring, my friend R. asked me whether I was interested in meeting a guy she knew. He wasn't Jewish, she said, but was a climber and skier, extremely smart, "adorable," laid back, and so fun and interesting to talk to that if she wasn't getting hitched two months hence she'd date him herself. "Why not?" I answered, and suggested she give him my digits. I figured we'd have enough in common to survive dinner together, if nothing else.

Alas, the fix-up would not be so easily reconnoitered.

First, it turned out that R. was not closely acquainted with the mystery bachelor, but rather knew him through another friend. That friend, N., concurred that we two might click, but said she and her husband were in the process of fixing up The Bachelor with another woman. Some weeks later, when that liaison had failed to materialize, she renewed the idea of introducing us. Again, I offered up my phone number. But N. resisted this approach, suggesting instead that she and her husband join The Bachelor and me for a restaurant excursion.

Having suffered through more than one fix-up dinner at which the fixer-uppers came along to chaperone and observe, I wanted nothing to do with this approach. But N. was insistent, apparently fearing that The Bachelor wouldn't follow through with a phone call if left to his own devices. It's hard enough for me to hear/lip-read one dining companion in a noisy restaurant, but trying to follow a group conversation is too challenging a situation to throw at me on a first date. When I countered with this fact, N. proposed dinner at their place; because she and her husband are fabulous cooks, I agreed.

Unfortunately, N. was working out of state for most of the summer, and between everyone's complicated schedules it was months before we could find a collectively acceptable date. In the meantime, I weathered dates with the likes of Dr. Snaggletooth, Dr. Horn Dog, The Guy Who Asked Me Out (twice) in Front of His Girlfriend, The Not-Quite Divorced Guy, and Mr. Perfectionist. Needless to say, I was hopeful, but not terribly optimistic, when the appointed day finally rolled around.

Imagine my pleasant surprise, then, upon walking into N.'s kitchen and discovering The Bachelor to be friendly, easy to engage in conversation (we talked gear for ages, then segued to politics, travel, and climbing), obviously smart but sweetly unassuming, funny, interesting, direct, and as-advertised adorable. At the end of a long and lovely evening, when N. and her husband finally threw us out, he gave me a ride home and left me at my door with a climbing date for the following week.

It was July 27, 2003.

The rest is history.

You load 16 tons, and what do you get?

Blogger Goddess Scheherazade is job-hunting and career-reevaluating, and today lists the jobs she has held in her life. This post prompted me to reflect on my own work history, which dates back more than twenty years. Here are the jobs I have held in my life, to the extent I can remember them and in semi-chronological order:

Babysitter
Preschool teacher's assistant
Hebrew school teacher
Jewelry store assistant
Law firm gofer
Junior wrangler
Camp counselor
Sub sandwich maker
Hostess on roller skates
Research assistant to journalism professor
Manuscript editor
Research assistant to anthropology professor
Hostess/waitress off roller skates
Marketing assistant for environmental monitoring company
English teacher
Career counselor
Aerobics instructor
Barista
Assistant director of international human rights training program
Development director for small nonprofit
Research assistant to law professor
Law firm summer associate (x2)
Government agency law clerk (x2)
Judicial law clerk
Law firm associate (x3)
Public defender

No wonder I'm exhausted.

Bearding the Lion.

I have a new boyfriend! OK, not really, but after almost 8 months of hirsutitude, Steve finally shaved his beard off this weekend. It's like being with a whole new guy, a guy who draws double-takes from passers-by due to his remarkable resemblance to David Arquette but has more kissable cheeks and a more mischievous smile and better taste in women.

Sometimes I'm a little jealous of the whole guy/facial hair thing. A boy can alter his entire persona with nothing more than a week of razor abstinence, and can undo a misguided moustache moment (there are no other kinds of moustache moments) with a few flicks of the Bic. Not that I want to grow a goatee or anything, but my own aesthetic experiments seem to come with higher risks and more lasting consequences.

The first moment of seeing a freshly debearded man is deeply jarring. Whether the clean-shaven guy is my boyfriend, my brother, or my dad, my brain can't seem to process the baby-smooth face before me, and it flips frantically through my inner Rolodex searching for a match. But after a while (an hour, a day, maybe longer), the pink-cheeked face becomes reinstalled in the proper mnemonic location and I can't quite remember what the guy in question looked like hairy. If the man is a serial bearder like my father or Cocteau,* this facial-recognition process repeats itself time after time, always bringing shock with the first post-shave sighting.

Steve's recently removed beard began to sprout during our yurt trip at New Year's. By the end of January, it was thick and bushy and dramatically darker than his soft, smooth, golden-brown head hair. After some prompting (and by prompting, I mean whining) from me, he pruned it down to a more professional and less chin-tickling length, but it remained rebelliously black and unruly.

I rather like Steve's bearded look, which oozes the brooding, nonconformist sexiness of a mountain man. But I'm delighted to have his adorable face back for a while, because I missed his dimples and his chin and the intricacies of his smile.

Plus, he's totally cuter than David Arquette.
_________
* "There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard." Jean Cocteau.

Breaking up.

Kaput. Over. Finito. Done.

My relationship with the Danskin triathlon, that is. Yes, after six races in two cities over eight years, I'm making the split.

Danskin was not my first triathlon, but for years it was my favorite. My first tri, a small all-women's race in Oregon, was fun but challenging. I breast-stroked the entire swim, slogged through the bike course on my clunky mountain bike, and walked away ambivalent about the sport. But Danskin Seattle, in August '97, hooked me for good (and remains my best time ever at 1:22 and change, but I'm sure the run course was 1/2 mile short). Upon moving to Denver, I promptly entered myself in the local version, and I've done the race almost every year since (injuries and social obligations interfered in 1999 and 2001).

Despite the huge crowds and the consistent organizational incompetence that marred my annual Danskin experience, I remained addicted to the incredible spirit and energy it generated among thousands of women of all sizes, ages, and fitness levels. I loved getting first-timers involved, helping them train, and above all seeing their glowing smiles as they crossed the finish line. While other races boasted faster fields, better logistical support, and more challenging courses, something about Danskin kept me coming back year after year.

In 2002, the long lines at packet-pickup, the on-course congestion, and assorted other race-day annoyances left me questioning whether to make the break. But the following year, I found myself with a terrific group of training buddies and couldn't resist Danskin's allure. As it turned out, aside from a dumb-ass bike course with FOUR tight turnarounds, the 2003 race was the smoothest-run ever, from a line-free packet-pickup to intelligently laid-out transitions to ample on-course support. So when the 2004 race opened (in JANUARY, no less), I was among the first to register.

The first sign that things might be different this year came when the new, earlier date and new, farther-out location were announced. Supposedly, the Aurora Reservoir site was much larger and would alleviate the congestion that has consistently plagued this race, one of the nation's largest. Then came the e-mails about registration categories, parking rules, spectator restrictions and more. A tiny spark of worry ignited in my brain, a spark that would grow into a five-alarm fire of displeasure by the end of the race.

Here's the blow-by-blow:

Saturday
11:00 a.m.: My friends and I arrive at The High School That Looks Like A Prison, smack in the middle of nowhere, to fetch our race packets. We see a long, long, long line outside the school. We stand in it. After 45 minutes, we reach the front, where we discover that we were waiting only for parking permits (that's right, they made us PAY to park at a race for which we'd already shelled out $75). We open our wallets, then grumble our way inside and over to the actual packet pick-up tables. These lines move reasonably fast, but then the chaos begins. We are told to get our wave-specific swim caps. We stand on several long lines before finally finding the one leading to caps. All around us, we see women carrying goodie bags, but it takes us half an hour to find the spot to obtain our own. T-shirts somehow make their way into our hands amidst the teeming throngs. No one knows what is going on, where anything can be found, or why we are putting ourselves through this torture. Somehow, eventually, we obtain all the pieces of our triathlon puzzle.

1:00 p.m.: Exhausted, we drive back to civilization for our long-delayed lunch.

Sunday
4:00 a.m.: My alarm goes off. For a minute or two, I think it's joking.

4:45 a.m.: My friend N. arrives to pick me up. I'm finally excited about this race. At least, I will be when my eyes open.

5:25 a.m.: N. and I reach the edge of the Aurora Reservoir complex. Simultaneously, so do 2,500 other cars.

5:45 a.m.: We make it into the parking lot and find a spot. We are lucky. Friend S. is 10 minutes behind us and will spend 25 minutes sitting in her car waiting for some sign of movement into the parking area. Fearing that she will miss the race, she will park 6 miles from the race site and bike in carrying all of her gear.

5:50 a.m.: Bikes and bags in hand, we begin the 2 mile walk to the race site. Two uphill miles.

6:15 a.m.: We arrive at the transition area. Though the parking lot was nearly full when we arrived, the bike racks are surprisingly, almost disturbingly bare.

6:50 a.m.: I walk down to check out the swim course and discover that it is marked with only three buoys, two of which are dark blue and difficult to see against the water. I contemplate dropping out of the race, but convince myself that there will be enough people in the water to keep me on course. I curse the idiots who dreamed up these course markings, wondering aloud why they abandoned the numerous, large, fluorescent buoys used in years past.

6:55 a.m.: The race organizers announce that lots and lots and lots of people are stuck in their cars out on the road. The race cannot begin until they are all parked, both because many of those cars contain racers and because the bike course will be traveling the very road on which those cars are stuck. Start time is pushed back from 7:00 to 7:30.

7:10 a.m.: I return to my spot, only to discover that my carefully laid-out stuff is now crowded so severely that I can't reach my bike shoes. The bike next to me is taking up a space roughly the size of Delaware. I look around for its owner, then manage to move it just enough to create access to my gear. I curse rack hogs.

7:20 a.m.: The announcement goes out that the race will now begin "hopefully before 8:00." It is getting very warm. I eat a banana and refill my water bottle.

7:30 a.m.: I go to the bathroom for the 43rd time that morning. Amazingly, the portapotty lines are pretty short.

8:10 a.m.: The first wave finally - FINALLY - hits the water. I am starting to sweat. I refill my water bottle again.

8:20 a.m.: It is really hot. I am too annoyed to watch the pros coming out of the water.

8:30 a.m.: I go to the bathroom. Again.

8:40 a.m.: I put on my wetsuit. I have to go to the bathroom again.

8:45 a.m.: It is a loooong way from my bike rack to the swim start. As I make my way through the transition area, I pass several men. Some of them are pushing strollers. This is a delightful, heartwarming sight. Wait a minute. Those men are INSIDE THE TRANSITION AREA. I curse the idiots who have utterly failed to maintain t-area safety and security.

8:55 a.m.: I find my wave. It is really, really hot. I feel like a sweaty sausage in my wetsuit.

9:03 a.m.: My wave steps into the reservoir to await our start. My entire overheated body goes numb upon contact with the 68-degree water. I say a quick thank-you to my sausage casing.

9:05 a.m.: We're off! I can't see the buoys, but manage to follow the bobbing heads around me. My swim goes uneventfully, save for a hard blow to the head I sustain in the final stretch.

9:23 a.m.: I exit the water, only to find myself on a ridged, slippery boat ramp that inflicts irreparable damage to the bottoms of my feet as I struggle up it. I curse the morons who forgot to put down the astroturf-like carpet that protected against similar discomfort at last year's race.

9:26 a.m.: I have minor wetsuit-removal issues, but am soon powering away on my bike. Now I'm having fun!

9:45 a.m.: I ride strong on the hilly course. I curse the hundreds women on mountain bikes who appear unfamiliar with whole stay right/pass left concept.

10:09 a.m.: I learn that elastic shoelaces are a terrific time-saving gadget, except when you jam your foot into your running shoe so fast that the tongue ends up under your toes. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I curse myself. I also forget to wear socks.

10:11 a.m.: I see a volunteer handing out water at the run start.

10:11:05 a.m.: I see that there is only one volunteer handing out water at the run start, and she has just given both of the cups she is holding to the woman in front of me.

10:16 a.m.: I realize that I forgot to drink during the bike leg. Through a fog of dehydration, I curse myself, the race organizers, and the sun.

10:20 a.m.: Where the @(*%$*& is the *(#!&^$*! water station on this [email protected]*([email protected](* run course?

10:23 a.m.: I grab two water cups from a volunteer, nearly taking his fingers off in the process. I pour one cup over my burning body while chugging the other. However, since both cups inexplicably have been filled with less than one ounce of water, I am neither cooled nor hydrated.

10:27 a.m.: I begin to hallucinate. I daydream about tying the race organizers to a stake in the middle of Death Valley in August.

10:30 a.m.: I reach the second water station. There is no Gatorade. Again, I take two cups of water. They are both less than a third full. My brain begins to sizzle like bacon in a frying pan.

10:33 a.m.: I take some small comfort in the fact that no one has passed me on the run. I will myself to maintain my already-marginal pace.

10:34 a.m.: I begin to suspect that no one is passing me because no one can get past the throngs of "runners" who are actually walking, three or more abreast and apparently oblivious to the runners behind them. I curse walkers but manage to pass them without throwing an elbow.

10:35 a.m.: I pass a friend who started the race three waves before me. I can barely croak out a greeting, and feebly raise my arm to wave at her as I pass. I feel my head spinning and will myself to keep running.

10:36 a.m.: I can see the finish. I can see the finish. I can see the water bottles being handed out at the finish.

10:37 a.m.: I attempt to begin my sprint to the finish. My body has other plans.

10:38 a.m.: I cross the finish line reeling. I am barely coherent enough to stop the volunteer who tries to clip my (self-owned) timing chip from my ankle. I nearly scream at the hapless volunteer who drops a medal over my neck. Finally, someone sticks a bottle of water in my hand. I stand frozen for a moment trying to decide whether to pour it over my body or drink it. I settle for halfsies.

10:40 a.m.: As feelings other than heat and thirst return to my body, I realize that running without socks in blistering heat leads to just that - blisters. I yank off my shoes and hobble around barefoot on the hot pavement. The transition area is so far from the finish as to make sandals-retrieval impractical. I repeat some previously uttered curses.

12:10 p.m.: Somewhat hydrated, somewhat cooled, somewhat satisfied with our performance, N. and I begin the two mile trek back to the parking lot. We offer to give S., the friend who parked halfway back to Denver, a ride to her car.

12:40 p.m.: We put two bikes on the roof of the car and one in the back seat. S. sits on my lap in front. She is very small and a tad bony. Her butt-bone slowly cuts off bloodflow to my right quadriceps.

12:45 p.m.: We take our place in the endless line of cars. Fortunately, N.'s car has air-conditioning.

1:30 p.m.: S. shifts her weight, allowing feeling to return to my right thigh.

1:50 p.m.: We reach S.'s car, four miles from the parking lot.

2:30 p.m.: Home. Water. Shower. Nap. Never. Doing. Danskin. Again.

R.I.P.

While you might not have guessed it from my quiet over the first eleven stages, I'm a fanatical Tour de France junkie. I've altered my workout and commuting schedule this week to catch part of OLN's live coverage every morning, and I religiously check the stage and overall results online shortly after reaching the office.

I like Lance just fine, though I think he's a bit of a short-tempered, robotic, prima donna. As far as I'm concerned, Le Tour's main attraction is Tyler Hamilton. Tyler's perseverance and sheer grit (not to mention his boyish smile and Boulder connection) hooked me last year, when he rode to a 4th place finish and a stunning stage win despite a broken collarbone and excruciating pain. I'm now the proud owner of two autographed posters of the man (both obtained via friends who know of my crush; I've yet to meet him in person) and I maintain a voracious appetite for all things Hamilton (particularly now that he's riding for a hearing aid manufacturer's team).

This year's Tour preview issue of Bicycling magazine featured a terrific cover article on Tyler, focusing in part on his special relationship with his beloved dog, Tugboat. Tugboat died yesterday, just as the Tour roads began to slope upwards and the hunt for yellow began in earnest.

Tyler, please accept my condolences to you and Haven. May Tugboat provide the wind on your wheels and the inspiration in your heart as you pursue le maillot jaune you so richly deserve.

Allez!

L'ennui, c'est ici.

Several wonderful and prolific writers whose blogs I read have had unpleasant blog-related experiences in recent weeks. One was outed by a friend about whom she'd shared some unpleasant and deeply personal dirt. Another was passed over for a new job for lack of writing experience, and realized her blog was far too . . . open . . . to serve as a resume-enhancing portfolio. A third was dinged because of her blog, and soon thereafter her writings were found by a former boss, to unpleasant results.

All of this leaves me feeling gun-shy, particularly since most of my time and emotional energy these days is devoted to the bloggity red zones of my job, my sweetie, my family, and a few lucky (?) friends. To my knowledge, none of my colleagues read this stuff, but I'm not the least bit anonymous, I'm easily googled, and I'm occasionally linked-to by more prominent law bloggers. Steve checks in here from time to time, but regardless, I'm careful to keep most of the details of our relationship off-blog. And even if I did have something obnoxious or personal to write about my friends or family (like I would ever do that?!), I'd rather have you all in my audience than available as targets for my poison pen.

So instead of witty insights about life, love, and the joys of retinal degeneration, you're being subjected to pith about my adventures in closet cleaning and congestion battling. I really do apologize. I'll have to come up with something a tad steamier soon or you'll all abandon me for Belle's place.

In which I whine about nothing in particular.

So I'm kind of low right now. For no particularly good reason, but together with the heavier-than-usual workload it's contributing to my dearth of posts in recent days. A big part of the mood thing, I suspect, is caused by the fact that I've been feeling crappy for weeks, fighting some kind of cold/upper-respiratory thing. I've tried getting more sleep, I've tried easing up on the exercise, I've tried stepping up the exercise, I've tried Claritin and Cold Snap and vitamin-C and lots of water, but it lingers on. My eyes burn, my head hurts, my nose hurts, and I alternate between sneezing fits and spates of excessive congestion. I'm sure that if I take the time to visit the doctor, he'll look me over, suck some blood out of my arm, and tell me that everything's normal. And so I suffer on, not feeling lousy enough (and not having time enough) to take a sick day, but not feeling particularly great either. This lingering physical lowness is taking a serious toll on my overall mood.

I spent large chunks of the weekend hiding out in the air-conditioned confines of my home, trying to pull my mental and physical self together and to reach a better place. Yesterday, I was happy to spend the day out of the office, riding a couple of hours south to visit clients at the federal prison complex. I got home just before 5 and took advantage of the opportunity to ride my bike up to the outside pool for a lovely, relaxing swim. I felt pretty good in the water, and thought perhaps I'd turned a corner, but woke this morning with a head full of snot and was cranky again by the time I got to work.

I'm trying not to take my grouchiness out on Steve, who's been busy with his visiting parents and the remodeling projects they're working on together. He's been wonderfully patient with my moody blues, though we are sorely in need of some quality, un-schedule-driven, family-free time together. Most of all, I need some relaxing summery down-time that is not spent burrowing deep into my own head - an evening of drinks with friends, a picnic and a free outdoor concert, a barbecue, or a mellow mountain afternoon. Unfortunately, such a thing probably will not fit into the calendar for at least another ten days, between my upcoming triathlon, Steve's Wisconsin boys' weekend, assorted meetings and other extracurricular obligations, and the numerous deadlines hanging over my head.

My tired, achy, congested, cranky head.

Possessed.

Had I gotten up early today, I would have gone for a long bike ride followed by a run. But given the first chance in days to get some real sleep, I snapped it up eagerly. By the time my morning laziness was starting to fade, it was too damn hot outside for serious exercise. I weighed alternatives: grocery shopping, laundry, some of the (ugh) work I brought home, a nap, some reading, or the always-enticing Bad Saturday TV?

Shopping, I reasoned, could happen at the tail end of the run I will go on once it cools off a bit in early evening. My brain and eyes are just too tired for reading or working. And the laundry's mostly done, since it meshes nicely with the Bad TV I slipped effortlessly into watching.

Then, midway through a silly E! True Hollywood Story (I turned the tube on too late to catch a 90210 rerun), I was suddenly struck with an uncontrollable urge to organize. These moments strike me rarely, as the jumbled messes in my closets and drawers reveal. But I've recently been attempting to bring some order to my chaos and have been purging clutter like mad, sort of the opposite of a nesting urge.

And so I attacked. First the closet that contains most of my "nice" clothes, piling and organizing and sorting and gasping with surprise at discovering lovely, stylish items I'd all but forgotten about. Then on to the blouses-and-pants closet, where I held firm to the self-imposed edict of eliminating anything I haven't worn in more than 18 months. Finally, coats, too, were added to the pile. Three hours later, I had a little space in my always-burgeoning armoires and two huge lawn-and-leaf bags filled with my cast-offs. A few of these things (the faux-leather jacket from Paris, the nice black suit that's just not me, the long suede skirt that's four sizes too big, several silk blouses left over from my hide-the-body days) will make some lucky Goodwill shoppers very happy. Others (the long red "riding" jacket, the brownish-green plaid suit, the too-tight, too-low pocketless jeans) are destined for the fashion disaster hall of shame, and I'm left wondering how they lasted so long in my possession.

Feeling satisfied, I surveyed the results of my labors. Alas, even after this massive dumping, my closets are still embarrassingly full. I live alone and am blessed with substantial amounts of closet space, so I've never really had to worry about finding room for new acquisitions. Friends have instituted a one-in, one-out rule for clothes shopping. Others engage in a seasonal dumping of the faded and outdated. I'd attempt something similar, but I'm almost as attached to my clothes as I am to my books.

The relationships to the two are slightly different. My books are my close friends, my windows, my soul. I need piles of books around me to feel grounded and safe and sane. My clothes, on the other hand, are more of an encumbrance, but I'm always sure that waiting just around the corner is the precise situation or event to which I will need to wear a particular skirt/dress/blouse/pair of boots, and so I can't possibly throw them away.

I'm not particularly girly, but all the same I need my stuff around me. Sometimes I think I'd like to be less of a material girl. To be able to move on a whim and to carry all my worldly possessions on my back. Yet while I can be very, very happy in a tent or a tiny third-world hotel room or a simple apartment, at least for some moderate stretch of time, I really do love my home and my things. As I write this, I'm realizing that they provide me with a sense of independence and accomplishment. Even as these possessions hold me in place, they remind me that I'm self-reliant, self-sufficient, and free. I'm not sure that this makes sense, but it's a nice feeling.

Still, I have to get rid of some more of this crap.