Mother's Day

The worst thing about my first mother's day with no mom is all dread from other people on my behalf. If I had a dollar for everyone who said/texted me: "I know today is hard for you..."

We never really bought into the Hallmark holidays too much so it's really not that bad. If there's one thing I've learned it's there is no predicting what will send you into a downward spiral but I highly doubted that something so contrived as the big M.D. was going to do it, and I was right.

I got up and met my friend M at the house at 9:00 and we moved the last of the new mattresses over to my house to put into the guest room. She even brought the van from work (a futon store) so space wasn't an issue. And she took the old futon back to work to be recycled and waived the $15 recycling fee they normally charge. I love having friends in all the right places. :)

After that I scarfed a quick breakfast and then went to meet up with E so we could go bike shopping for her. I LOVE bike shopping, even if it's not for me. She hadn't eaten yet, so we walked over to Vivace, where I had one of their highly addictive Mexican mochas and we waited too long for food. We kept forgetting that trying to get food out on Mother's day was sheer folly. But we amused ourselves watching the endless array of cute children coming by.

After that we finally got going and headed over to River City Bikes, where I ran into Jonathan Maus of bikeportland.org , shopping for a mother's day bike for his wife. Stacy, my favorite sales person, wasn't available to help us and sent us another woman that neither of us was very impressed with. When I asked her to start by measuring E, she flatly refused and said that didn't really help, she was just going to have to test ride some bikes. Hence, we spent almost our whole hour there with E on a Gary Fisher that she liked, but couldn't quite get to feel right. When we finally asked for the next size up, it was perfect. I hate that! Seems like I keep having to tell customer service people how to do their jobs lately and it's really annoying.

Crappy sales person aside, there's not much that's more fun than test riding shiny new bikes. I went out with her on a high end Redline cross bike I had no business riding. Luckily it was too small for me so I wasn't at all tempted. I like the idea of getting a cross bike, but I really can't justify it. My bike dilemma right now is that I want a touring bike and a cargo bike but I don't want to buy two bikes. However those two styles of riding are pretty much diametrically opposed to each other. Cargo bikes are heavy and sturdy and meant for short distances, while touring bikes are much lighter faster, comfortable and meant for the long haul. I'm thinking that getting an Xtracycle and then maybe getting this snazzy new trailer type thingy for our road bikes might be a good compromise. We'll see.

E was all set to buy a bike today, thinking that it was like shoes or something, you just go in try one on and take it home. I advised her strongly to think of this more as the beginning of a research process that might take a few weeks (I took six months buying my first full time commuter bike after my car was stolen, but that's a little extreme). By the time we were done, I had gotten through to her and she decided to try a few different stores and bikes before deciding. I really need to take her over to see Cory at Seven Corners.

We both had places to be so I dropped her off and then went off to Rerun consignment store to drop off mom's shoes. This trip went MUCH better than Buffalo Exchange and they took all but two pairs of the shoes I brought. They have about 6 weeks to sell before they take them off the shelf and donate them. Mom had a lot of nice shoes so I'm pretty confident that they'll find a home. The woman who sorted them for me said, “I think we can fill the shoe needs of all of NE Portland just with what you brought in!”

After that I went home and finally went to work on my never ending math. All in all it wasn't any worse than any other day that mom's been dead and it was a lot better than some.