The Boy's Friends

The Boy has new friends from a camp he attended a few weeks ago. The kids in his cabin connected via group text messages and social media. They all live reasonably close to each other, and they made plans to get together. I talked to Jack about it.

"I don't have a problem with him hanging out with these kids. They are all intelligent, curious, risk-taking kids who have time and money," I said "but..."

"They sound like..." he said. "...a decent group of kids."

"...a group of kids likely to experiment with smoking pot," I said at the same time.

"Oh," he said. "I can see that." At one of the middle school parent meetings, the Drug and Alcohol Use Prevention Manager came and spoke to us. The more affluent the high school, the more likely the kids were to drink and try drugs. These kids have time and money, and also stressful, pressured lives. An article in The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan recently said that kids of helicopter parents were more likely to binge drink to reduce the pressures from school.

This doesn't apply to all kids or all parents. Claire Adele said the only reason she doesn't drink or smoke is because she doesn't want to ruin her chances to get into her first choice school. What happens after she gets in? Are all bets off?

End of Summer

I went for a bike ride today to Gasworks Park. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. It is the end of summer, and I am feeling melancholy. The end of summer is usually a little sad when I think of all of the things I had wanted to do, but didn't. I wanted to go paddle-boarding, or ride a canoe. I wanted to take the Underground Tour. Normally I ride to Gasworks and turn around at the entrance before entering the park. There is a gravel road into the park for bikes, and I fear the transition from pavement to gravel to grass to pavement again. I fear my bike slipping, though I've done it countless times before. I bike into the park, sit by the steps, and look out over the water into downtown. It is a little hazy since it hasn't rained in ages.

At the beginning of summer, I couldn't ride my road bike. I rode to UW and back, and I was exhausted. Today I rode to Gasworks like it was nothing. I felt fine.

I felt like I missed summer because in many ways, I did. At the beginning of the summer, I couldn't paddle board, canoe, or do the Underground Tour. Now, I probably could do all of those things.

How quickly I forgot how disabled I had been.

Slacking, and It Shows

Happy Six Month Surgery Anniversary to Me!

I had a dream last night I was running down the hall of a middle school. It was a lovely dream, and the middle school had soft, squishy carpeting that for some reason made it easy for me to run on it. I wasn't running very fast. It was like I was running in slow-ish motion, but I was running nonetheless.

This morning, I had my physical therapy appointment with Evan. I've been alternating my appointments with him and Jason, so I don't see Evan as much as I used to. He does know that I want to run, though.

What happens when I slack on my PT exercises? I've kind of wondered what would happen. People don't talk about the consequences of slacking, they say "Just do it!" Will I get worse, stay the same or will I get a little bit better just because I am walking around and such? At what point can I start to taper and still be normal? I look at Armando, my professional athlete friend. He works his butt off everyday for hours. I see him running on the treadmill.

"That's great!" I said, sincerely happy for him.

He smiled, "Yes, I have been sprinting." I don't need to be in Armando shape. I just need to be in good enough shape for a forty-seven year old American woman. Maybe that is too low of a bar. Heck, I am not asking to be like a middle-aged New Yorker or a Los Angelina. Maybe a forty-seven year old European or Canadian woman who lives in a big city. I'll be happy to pass for a Vancouver-ite or Parisian.

Today, Evan seemed "perplexed" which means he knew I was slacking on my weight lifting. "Your hamstrings are fine. Your calves are fine. Everything is fine except your quad strength," he said. "For the next few weeks, we are going only focus on quad strength."

I was busted.

Here is what happened. I can explain this now because Evan is getting married in a week and he is probably too busy running errands and doing wedding busy work to read my blog. Good for Evan that he has better things to do. (Meant sincerely, not sarcastically.)

The last time I was at the gym and lifted weights was August 4. Maybe. I might have skipped that day and my last day might have been August 3. We left for France on August 5 and got back on August 16, and I haven't been to the gym since then. I was super active on the trip, and at home I do my regular exercises (most of the time). The main issue is I have been riding my road bike instead of the stationary bike. The road bike is harder and I am more tired after riding the equivalent amount of time of the stationary bike. When I ride the stationary bike for forty-five minutes, I feel jolly afterwards. Bored, perhaps, but in a good mood. I feel bone tired after I ride the road bike for the same amount of time. I wonder if I need more vitamins, more protein, more sleep, more electrolytes or less sugar. I am so tired I question my existence. Maybe I need to start drinking coffee.

The advantage of the stationary bike is that it is at the gym, and the weigh lifting machines are at the gym. If I am not at the gym, then I am not lifting weights. If I am not lifting weights, I am not building quad strength. I am getting in better shape, building endurance, flexibility, balance and so forth, but Evan says I need "simple, stupid strength."

To answer my previous question, yes, I need to keep up, and yes, my PT team can tell when I slack, even when it was in one area. It wasn't like I quit entirely. I was still biking and doing my crab walks. But they can tell.

Forgetting

As of tomorrow, I will be six months out of my surgery for my ACL repairs. The typical full recovery for an ACL repair is nine months, so I have three left to go. With the exception of the sets of exercises I need to do everyday, my life has returned back to normal, more or less.

What are the benefits of remembering what has happened and what are the benefits of forgetting? Humans started writing things down thousands of years ago so we could remember things, whether it was how much we paid for a cow, or stories of war and adventure. What did we do right, where did we err?

Should I try to remember everything about my accident and its subsequent recovery process? Should I think about it, or just keep plugging away, each day a fresh page and the day before gone forever? Should I look back and see how far I've come, or just look forward to where I will be going?

What about the Boy? I am better off forgetting the challenges he faced last year in school and earlier this summer, or should I give him a clean slate when he comes back from camp? Does remembering help or hurt, or does it depend how we use it?

Bernadette Fox v. Cheryl Strayed, or Found & Lost vs. Lost & Found

Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple and Wild by Cheryl Strayed: these books are almost polar opposites. Most of the women I know are in the Strayed camp or the Bernadette camp.

In Wild, Cheryl Strayed recovers from a childhood filled with poverty, her mother's death, a stale marriage and drug use as she hikes the Pacific Coast Trail. Bernadette was a genius architect who loses her mojo when fate kicks her in the shins a few times. She becomes a hermit and hides in her version of the Petit Trianon (aka an Airstream trailer) in her backyard. Strayed was lost and becomes found. Bernadette was found, then became lost and has to find herself again.

"Strayed was too whiny. I couldn't get past the first chapter," said one friend who previously loved her job but is now a full-time parent. She dressed up as Bernadette for Halloween one year, complete with the fishing vest and pockets full of passports.

Or, "I loved Wild, but I haven't gotten around to reading Bernadette yet. I know I am supposed to read it..." said another friend who wandered through her twenties.

While I wasn't a genius architect, I did have my shit together when I was in my twenties. I liked my job, I had a nice boyfriend who then became my husband. I went to graduate school and was finding more and more interesting work to.

Then fate came along and kicked me in the shins a few times. My first child died, and my brother had problems with his major mental illness. Jack's job required overnight and weekend work, and I was traveling three or four days a week to Los Angeles. While the work was interesting, I wanted to have a baby and traveling that much was not compatible with motherhood. So I quit my job and became a full-time parent. Claire Adele came along and was a colicky infant. The Boy was born three years later, and then we moved to Seattle.

Somewhere along the way, my hopes and dreams got packed up in a box and put on a high shelf in the closet. I completely identify with Bernadette, who ends up passed out on a couch in a pharmacy in the middle of downtown Seattle in the of the day. I even have my own version of a Petit Trianon in my backyard (not that I am complaining.) "You will become a menace to society if you don't create," one of Bernadette's friends warns her. I have seen a few middle-aged friends implode from lack of meaningful work, and I fear that might happen to me. I am Bernadette.

I started rereading Wild, and I have much more empathy from Strayed now that I've thought about her journey in terms of lost and found. Lost is lost, no matter when it happens. And that is hard.

Pooped

Sunday's Exercise: Jack and I biked 16.4 miles on the road, not on the stationary bike.

I am pooped. I am tired and I don't know why. Maybe I am anemic. Maybe I was zapped by the heat last weekend or the change in weather. Maybe I am exercising too much, or maybe too little. Maybe I am tired from the trip and my jet lag is still lingering. Maybe I am getting old. At PT today, I asked Jason if my knee was stiff because I was working too hard or not enough.

"Yeah, that can happen," he said. Even the pros don't know.

I am tired of my knee not being normal and I am sick of doing my physical therapy exercises. In three days, I'll be six months out from the surgery. I long to be normal where I don't have a list of exercises I need to do every single day.

I sound like a whiny teenager. Forgive me.

I confessed to Evan on Friday that I did none of my physical therapy exercises while I was on vacation.

"That's the first time I've heard that," he said.

"Are you serious or sarcastic?" I asked, not able to tell the difference.

"No one does their exercises on vacation," he said.

"I was so tired when we came back at the end of the day, I wanted to collapse into bed and be horizontal. I was too tired to do all of those exercises after being on my feet all day."

"I am not too worried," he said. "You probably did more on a vacation day than you do on a regular day."

Still, I am tired of doing my exercises. I just want a break from it. If I didn't see these guys twice a week, I might not do anything.

Or maybe I'd go crazy. Next week, I start going to PT once a week instead of twice a week. I saw my friend Armando running on the treadmill Friday, and I thought "I need to be doing that." Armando is a professional athlete, and exercising is his job. But still, I wish I could run. I need to be able to run before I stop PT. I have this sense if I stop PT before I can run, then I might not every be able to run at all. Plus I'll need to pass the test for skiing, whatever that is.

I met with Jason this morning and asked what I needed to do before they would put me on the treadmill. He gave me the list which includes single leg squats and single leg jumps. I can do double leg jumps (yay! go me!) but gravity is my enemy when it comes to single leg jumps. Shortly after the surgery, I had the goal of getting out of the brace, then normalizing my gait. Now I have a goal to run, I am happy. I have a reason to keep up with the exercises.

I hope. I am still really tired.

Cool Stuff in France

I just finished a post on traveling with potentially bored teenagers. Now I am going to write about traveling as a bored middle aged woman.

I have been to Paris several times before, and I am eternally grateful. I love it, but the mind also loves novelty. In 2010, Eleanor and I went to London and we had a blast. I would love to go to Italy or Spain or Switzerland or Germany. But I was back in Paris.

It wasn't that I don't like Paris--it was that I had already seen the sight before. I had already been to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and the L'Arch de Triomphe. Poor me, right?

The trip surprised me. I was excited that we saw things that I hadn't seen before, which was awesome. Some of the stuff we saw was stuff that isn't on the tour bus route. We saw the Musee de Cluny -- national du Moyen Age. It was the best museum I saw in Paris. It was tiny, had no line to get in, wasn't so crowded you couldn't move, you could see the whole thing in less than two hours and it had really cool stuff. Win-win-win-win-win. It was small but the collection was diverse. There were paintings, sculptures, stained glass, tapestries and furniture, amongst other stuff.

First, they had examples of stained glass up close. Normally when you see stained glass in a church, it is high up and there is so much the eye can't pick up details. I thought it was just glass, but they painted on the glass. These small samples....

Looks like graffiti was alive and well in the Middle Ages.

Make this....

....look way more impressive, as if it isn't impressive enough already.

The best part were the "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries.

I learned that the old marble statues were originally painted, but most paint wears off after a few hundred years. 

All of this medieval art was stored in a castle from the Middle Ages, as you can see in the background of this old picture. I imagine the planning committee of Paris sitting around discussing: "We have a castle in the Latin Quarter. What should we do with it?" Duh. Make it a museum.

We also visited the Catacombs, which houses the bones of more than six million Parisians in limestones quarries 83 steps below the streets. We had to wait in line for three hours to see the catacombs. I don't think the tour buses stop here. I didn't take many pictures down there--it was a sacred place

Another cool part was seeing La Ligue 1 game in Caen. When people asked me what I liked the best, I say seeing this game. I think it was because it was one of the few places on the whole trip where we were the only tourists around for miles. Plus it was fun. Futball is like Friday night high school football in the Midwest. People take this seriously, cheer like crazy, and the boys play with a speed and fierceness that is hard to notice on television. It was the first time I have ever seen a bicycle kick in a game.

Finally, I loved Sacre Coeur. We have seen numerous churches and places of worship, but this place touched me. I lit a candle there for my mom and dad. There were a half dozen little coves outside the main part of the church, and I stopped and prayed for the first time in years. I understood why people made such effort to make churches beautiful and tall. It allowed people to lose themselves in something bigger and more powerful than they are. I suppose that is the reason to trek halfway around the world to go to a place where we don't fit in and by nature feel out of place--to find ourselves. All along our trip, we probably saw more tourists than we saw native french. Like many other travelers, I am aghast when I see tourists. As a prominent Seattle-ite Eric Liu once said, "We all complain about traffic, but how often do we realize we are the traffic?"

My Kids' First Trip to France v. Mine

One night we were at a late dessert and Claire Adele was surreptitiously looking at her phone. We didn't put kids on the international phone plan, so she would try to pick up up wifi where ever she could. What was up? We later learned she was SnapChatting a boy from her high school who was also in Paris at the same time with his family. He asked her if she wanted to meet up. At ten o'clock at night.

Claire Adele just turned sixteen. When I was sixteen, I went to France for three weeks with a school group and I stayed with a family. At the end of the home visit, the group spent three days in Paris. Throughout the whole trip, we had a tremendous amount of freedom. In Paris, my friend Elizabeth and I went shopping for racy underwear, and then went to a cafe and debated ordering champagne. We didn't, but we did have wine with dinner along with the rest of the group. It was standard practice to have wine with meals on the trip even though we were sixteen. We didn't have wine with every meal, but when in Rome... Elizabeth and I walked back to the hotel alone from the Eiffel Tower at ten at night.

Claire Adele was on vacation with her mom, dad and younger brother. Poor kid.

My first trip to France was when I was in seventh grade. My school had a field trip to Europe over Spring Break. My parents paid for half of the trip, and I saved all of my babysitting money and paid for the rest. I went again in eighth grade, this time on my own dime. There were thirty kids, two teacher chaperones, and a handful of parents loaded on a tour bus where we were guided around to all of the major sights. Every few days, we'd get a few hours to roam. It was a blast, but it was also very educational. It was as if we were in a lecture hall seven hours a day learning about history, culture and architecture. When we weren't on the bus, we were learning about the food of France and trying to communicate with waiters and shop clerks.

There was no whining or complaining or eye-rolling. These field trips were no obligatory family vacation. Every kid who was there had to beg their parents to let them go on the trip. Everyone was jazzed to be there. And the peer pressure was real. We went to restaurants where the menu was already planned and the food was served. Half of the time, we didn't know what we were eating. Rumor had it that at one restaurant, we ate horse meat. I doubt it, but no one complained and everyone ate what was in front of them, or they went hungry and later pigged out on Toblerone bars back at the hotel. No one bitched and said "I don't like mushrooms" or "Everything on the menu has meat" when there are clearly six items that are vegetarian but just not interesting enough or perhaps are too weird. No one complained that we spent too much time at the Louvre or not enough time at the catacombs. A few people grumbled when we had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch a bus or a train, but everyone moved along appropriately. It was what it was, and we were happy. In fact, the parents who accompanied us on the trip who complained the most. They had Paris Syndrome, and complained that the Metro and Montmartre smelled like piss and that the tour one year had missed the Louvre because we went on Easter and the Louvre was closed on Easter. Not one of the students cared about missing the Louvre because we were fat and happy seeing everything else and eating Toblerones. Life was good. No. Life was damn near perfect.

Overall, my kids held up well to being with their parents, not including the several times Claire Adele got lost on accident/purpose. She was would stop to take a selfie and then Jack, the Boy and I would have moved on. A regular picture takes like five seconds. Selfies take two minutes to get the right frame, lighting, angle, smile, etc. She got "lost" at Versailles, the Louvre, Sacre Coeur and the Montreal Airport.

Before the trip, I feared the kids might be snot bags. I remember an ancient skit from Saturday Night Live with Sara Gilbert rolling her eyes through a whole trip to Europe with her family. The trip was fabulous, but the teen was perfectly ungrateful. I saw this skit before I had kids, and it haunted me ever since: "Is this what it is like to take a family vacation with teens?"

Before the trip, I talked to three people who are younger than me and don't have kids. I expressed my fear of traveling with my kids, especially coupled with massive jet lag and culture shock. I am too far removed to recall the dynamics of my family vacations, but I am sure I was a happy, delightful camper. Mark said he had to join his parents and grandparents on a cruise to Mexico when he was sixteen. He was the only sixteen year old on the whole boat. Everyone was older and could drink and do the night club thing, or they were kids under ten who hung out in the kiddie lounge with supervised activities. He said except for the island of Catalina, the vacation kind of sucked. Evan said he was kind of dick at times when his family went to Japan for a month. Anita said her family had to separate her and her sister on vacations, and mom and dad would take turns spending time with each kid.

While I can't remember being a jerk on vacations, I can remember unpleasant thoughts rolling through my head. I don't remember if I articulated them or not, like the time we drove from Ohio to visit New Jersey to see my uncle when I was in high school. The trip was planned about three days before we left. My dad had scheduled vacation, but my parents didn't have a plan, which was highly unusual for them. So, we drove through Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in August. I remember thinking Hershey, PA was the most boring place on the earth and we ate at an IHOP or Denny's for dinner. Dinner. This was two years after I went to France. Sure, I could eat what might have been horse meat in France but fucking A I wasn't going to eat at a knock-off Denny's in the vast wasteland between Pittsburgh and Philly. In New Jersey, we visited my uncle's family and their dobermans, one of which snapped at me, which was scary as that dog was trained to attack intruders.

I didn't tell anyone about the pleasant thoughts, either. My uncle lived on a hill in a rural part of New Jersey. We could see the light from the city down the hill. Their yard was super dark and I saw my shadow from the full moon for the first time ever in my life. My brother, cousin and I watched the planes come in from far, far away to land at the airports. Years later, I remember this night.

So yeah, my kids didn't have to drive from the Midwest to the eastern seaboard in August. They got to go to Europe. But that doesn't change the fact that they are teenagers.

* Maybe we didn't drink at dinner. I don't know. That was when MADD was big and we had to sign pledges to never let alcohol pass our lips. When I went to France in seventh and eight grade, we had wine with a few dinners. I recall that for sure.

France: Stairs and Sensible Shoes

I survived France, all aspects of it. My knee worked (yay!--round of thunderous applause) and I didn't loathe my family at the end of the trip.

First, my knee. In the Middle Ages when many of the castles we visited were built, there was no such thing as the Americans with Disabilities Act. France has a shitload of stairs and very few places are accessible to people with mobility issues. Interestingly, there were exhibits in numerous museums for the visually impaired. One woman outside the L'Arch de Triomphe was asking for signatures on a petition to increase accessibility for french monuments. I would have signed it, but I felt uneasy giving my John Hancock to a strange woman in a foreign country on a petition where I might only be able to understand half of what was written. I feared signing something like, "I agree there should be access for the disabled at french monuments and I agree to sign over my checking account to Marie-Laure DuPont."

Back to the stairs. The Metro, our primary means of transport outside of walking, is underground. The Metro does not have escalators or elevators. There are at least two to four flights of stairs at every Metro stop. Train stations have stairs. I managed to climb up and down stairs while carrying a backpack and a suitcase. Our hotel had a tiny elevator and slow elevator that was primarily used for luggage, so I climbed up and down the steps of every hotel.* The Catacombs have stairs. Museums like the Louvre have stairs. Versailles has stairs. We climbed up the L'Arch de Triomphe via spiral staircases. Sacre Coeur has stairs. We climbed stairs in the neighborhood to get to Sacre Coeur before we climbed those stairs.

Mont St. Michel has more stairs than there are stars in the sky. We stayed over night at Mont St. Michel--which was completely awesome, by the way. I highly recommend it. The website warned that there are seventy steps to the hotel room, which is fine, except the hotel room was several flights below the abbey. They also failed to mention (or I failed to imagine) how many times I would have to climb those seventy steps. Up and down for dinner. Up and down to get the Boy because he wanted to chill in the room instead of look at more old stuff. Up and down to the abbey twice. Up and down to walk around Mont Saint Michel in low tide twice.

And I survived. I only punted on climbing up the steps to the Eiffel Tower, and that was because it was early in the trip. I feared getting to tired or hurt, and then being lame for the rest of the trip, which would have been bad. Interestingly, I think it might have been more steps up to the top of the L'Ache de Triomphe, but I went up that unquestioningly.

I would use the handrail whenever I could and would go as slow as a possibly could instead of letting gravity bound me down the steps or letting momentum carry me up. I didn't want to lose stability and fall.

I also wore sensible shoes. At my post-op appointment with Dr. Tex, he told me to wear sturdy shoes on my trip, and he nodded at my tennis shoes. Since my surgery, I have been wearing athletic shoes almost every day because they are comfortable and because I workout every day. I have a really cute and comfortable pair of Naot sandals which have cork insoles. I was hoping to wear these in France. I did for the first day, until I was slipping and tripping over the cobblestones. They didn't give me the stability I needed to navigate the century old streets and sidewalks. On went the sport shoes, and I looked like a tourist from the 1980's. Egads, but I had no choice. At least I had matching scars on my knees. I was glad I wore running shoes to Versailles. Instead of my usual twenty paces behind my family on a regular sidewalk, at Versailles I was forty paces behind. If I were wearing sandals, I'd still be there.

I wish I would have bought a nice pair of waling shoes before the trip. I did that six years ago before my daughter and I went to London for a week. I was too pre-occupied with other stuff I guess to plan that far ahead. Next time.

Jack and I, plus cobblestones at Versailles.

Proof I made it to the top of the L'Arch de Triomphe

Medieval castle at Fougeres. Notice stairs in foreground. We climbed up almost all of the towers. Why? Because they were there.

Notice rocky and dried mud walking surface around Mont St. Michel.

Crowded but exceptionally cool walkway at Mont St. Michel.

A nice view of Mont St. Michel at night.

* Except for the hotels in Vancouver, British Columbia. We flew out of Canada which was a) significantly cheaper and b) very efficient compared to understaffed TSA stations at SeaTac.

Paris S__ and Vancouver

A few days ago, I was driving the Boy home from soccer practice.

"Are you going to get a soccer jersey in France?" I asked. "Maybe one from Paris St. Germain?"

"Maybe," he said.

"I don't know what their jerseys look like," I said, so he googled it and showed me at a stoplight.

"When I google 'Paris S,' it came up with 'Paris St. Germain,' 'Paris Shooting,' and 'Paris Syndrome,'" he said. Jesus, I thought.

"What's Paris Syndrome?" I asked.

"What happens to tourists who are excited to go to Paris and then are extremely disappointed," he said. Egads. That is not what I need the Boy to look up. This will be our first big urban vacation as a family. Normally we go to places where there are mountains, beaches and/or hiking. I am a little nervous of how he'll think of Paris. He isn't a city Boy.

Fast forward to yesterday.

"I am looking forward to going to Vancouver," Jack said yesterday morning before we got in the car to drive to Paris. He was the only one.

We left yesterday for our trip to France, except we didn't leave for France, we left for Vancouver, British Columbia. While Vancouver is a great city and I like visiting it, I just wanted to go straight to Paris.

Vancouver is a short hop and a jump from Seattle, and wow--all of a sudden you are plopped into the middle of a cosmopolitan town.* There are great mountain views, great water views, great parks, great restaurants and great shopping. Yay! It is awesome. When I first came here when Claire Adele was in first grade, I couldn't believe I had missed out on this city my whole life. When we first moved to Seattle in 2004, I was afraid of the hassle of the border crossing, just as I was afraid that I didn't know how to ride a ferry to the San Juan Islands. In both cases, I got over it when I was invited by friends to go both places.

I digress. We are in Vancouver. The kids have lost count of how many times we have been here, which is kind of cool.

Yesterday morning, Jack said he was looking forward to our brief trip to Vancouver before we head to Paris. He was the only one. He worked all weekend and overnight Wednesday, so I was doing most of the pre-trip planning and packing. It was bizarre to pack for the drive to Vancouver and then the flight to Paris. This kids didn't know what to put in their backpacks. I brought a million books, knowing I'll leave half of them in the car at the Vancouver airport.

Why are we in Vancouver if we are going to Paris? Because it was significantly cheaper to fly out of Van to Paris than from Seattle. The Canadian dollar is super weak, and I am assuming fewer Canadians want to take international trips when their currency is in the toilet.

"But Lauren, even if it is cheaper, there is a cost," said my friend Sangita who is spending three weeks in Germany this summer. She is right. Let's say we are saving x dollars on the flight to Paris from Vancouver. We are spending x times 75% to go to Vancouver for three nights--two nights before we leave and one night after, plus the long drive between Vancouver and Seattle, which can be as short as three hours or as long as five if you stop for lunch, have a long wait at the border, and traffic in both cities. Which sucks when it is bad. Which is exactly what happened yesterday.

The challenge with car trips is that there is no precise departure time--it is squishy, which I kind of hate. No one is motivated to get their butt in gear like when we travel by plane. We planned to leave "around ten," which meant we left at 10:45. The night before we left, the Boy realized he only had three pairs of underwear that fit. When I heard that, I was actually surprised he had any underwear that fit given that he has grown six inches taller since the last time he got new undies. So Jack and the Boy ran to the mall and were there when it opened yesterday morning. Nevermind we could have bought underwear in Van or Paris--they ran the errand before we left. When Jack got back, he realized he had to finish his notes from call on Wednesday night. Argh. Were we ever going to leave?

We finally did leave. We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Bellingham (which was awesome, by the way) and the kids practiced their French during lunch. I was getting ready to say, "Nous sommes quatre," to the hostess and "Merci" to the waitress, but I didn't because they spoke English.

After lunch, we hit border patrol and had to wait for forty-five minutes, to then get stuck in stop and go weekend traffic into Vancouver. The Boy had said previously said he was worried I would embarrass him, and I couldn't figure out why. Then we were stuck in traffic, and Jack and I started bickering. He was going to make a left turn on a red, and I panicked. In Seattle, everyone runs reds. At best, it is annoying and at worst it is dangerous. The light turns green and you have to check to see who is flying like a bat out of hell through the red. When I drive in Canada, I try very hard not to be a jackass so they don't look at my license plate and think "stupid American." 

"See!" yelled the Boy. "Don't embarrass me in France! Just talk quietly." He had a point.

We finally got to the hotel after being stuck in downtown gridlock. I was pissed. Why didn't we just fly direct to France from Seattle and skip this hassle? We could have taken a forty-five minute train to SeaTac from our house and been in Paris the next morning. But no. We had to come here. 

When we got to the hotel, everyone was exhausted. The Boy was pissy, and he discovered he forgot his jacket and toothbrush, even though he was up at 6:30 a.m. poking around the house, looking at his phone half the time. Maybe if he got off his phone for a bit, he would have remembered his fucking toothbrush and jacket. So Jack, Claire Adele and I went to get the Boy a toothbrush and the rest of us coffee. Fortunately, he was old enough to leave alone in the hotel. I was happy to leave him behind. My head was throbbing.

We got back, and gave the Boy a sandwich we bought for him at Starbucks. Miraculously, his hanger went away. The Boy, Jack and I went to the pool while Claire Adele stayed in the room and checked her 850 text messages she missed during the five hour car ride to Van. Seriously. Social media for a teenager is like being a middle manager in a large corporation--she can't keep up with the group chats for her clubs and sports teams. I feel sorry for her. This is what she has to look forward to for the rest of her life. In our hotel room, there are pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the rose window from Notre Dame. The Boy found it curious that there were pictures of Paris in our hotel room in Vancouver.

In the pool, I finally relaxed. For the first time, I was glad we made the stop in Van. The Boy and Jack played ping pong on the patio and I talked a woman from England who was trying to prevent her seven year old son from cannonballing into the pool. I laughed. "It's vacation," I told her. "My kids are older, and I now relish when he was seven."

"Every age has its cross to bear," she said. She was right. That also applies to husbands.

After the pool, we found an Addidas shop and bought the Boy a new jacket. His soccer team jacket was so ratty. He wore every day. I washed it before we left, and couldn't get one of the sleeves clean at all.

"That's epoxy," the Boy said. He built rockets at Rocket Club. That black goo would never come off. 

The new jacket looked really good on him, to the point I couldn't say anything for fear he wouldn't like it if I liked it. We got the jacket, and went to the same Thai restaurant we've gone to every single time we've been to Vancouver. I would love to try a different restaurant, but that didn't work out. It was okay, the kids and Jack loved it. We tried new food there, and it was awesome.

When we got back to the hotel, the four of us went to the pool. The Boy was dancing in the hall. 

"I am finally getting excited about going to France," he said. 

"Were you nervous?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "It is a big international trip and all." Maybe a small dose of Van will help him inoculate him to Paris, which would be a good thing.

* Parts of this city, like any other major city, are kind of grungy. Yesterday, we saw a clean-cut blond girl wearing a Lululemon jacket and smoking a cigarette walking down the street. The jacket covered her butt, and we discovered she wasn't wearing pants, just underwear. Very strange.

"Copers"

Today, I had an appointment with Dr. Tex, the surgeon who operated on my knee. Dr. Tex talks a lot about building strength in my knee so I can work up to things like running. 

"This looks like a great sign!" he said, pointing at my bike helmet. I bike to my appointments, which is a very easy ride on the Burke-Gilman Trail. At times, it is faster to bike than it is to drive, especially in the morning when I pass the cars backed up on Montlake Blvd. Plus, I don't have to pay to park in the stadium garage. Win-win.

"It looks like you are well into the phase of doing 'activities of daily living' without a problem," he said. After my appointment, I had planned to take the Light Rail down to Capitol Hill to buy a new backpack for our upcoming trip to France. Yes, I am returning to activities of daily living. I can go to the grocery store and run errands. I can stand long enough to cook a meal. Yesterday, I stood at our kitchen counter for forty-five minutes peeling apples from our back yard for a cobbler. I could not have done that five months ago. 

I remember thinking about Dr. Backer, the Sports Medicine doctor I saw right after my accident. We were discussing whether or not I should have surgery. 

"So people are copers," he said.

"What is a 'coper'?" I asked.

"People who cope," he said. Of course, I thought, with an internal eye roll. "Those are people who have strong legs and keep their strength up so they can function without an ACL." In the yin and yang of strength versus flexibility, I am definitely in the flexible camp. The strength camp would laugh and tell me to go back to yoga class.

"With flexibility comes responsibility," Evan tells me.

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"It means you have to work harder," he said. Great.

Right now, I am supposed to be continuing to build strength in my legs, but building strength doesn't come naturally to me. I am wimp when it comes to lifting weights. I go to the gym and do the sets or reps I am assigned, but once I became competent, I stopped pushing myself and increasing the amount I could lift. I sat comfortably at the same weight for a long time. 

I thought about Dr. Backer's comments about copers. Ironically, copers would be best be able to cope with the recovery process of surgery. If they can build strength before the surgery, why not just get the surgery since building strength comes naturally to these folks? What does it mean for me, someone who doesn't like to lift weights? I couldn't "cope" without an ACL, but the recovery is harder for me than it would be for them.

This is so unfair. Or maybe not. Maybe they would have a hard time getting their extension and flexion back, which I enjoyed working on and was willing to work through. Maybe copers wouldn't like that part of recovery.