I started biking to work a couple of months ago.

The first time, it was a bit of a whim. My old bike has sat fairly idle in the garage since I moved into this house, despite our house’s proximity to my office (a mere five miles). “Hey,” I thought. “It’s nice out! I’ll just ride!”

It turns out that biking five miles is not the easiest thing to do when you’re completely out of shape. There’s also the matter of the hill profile. Here’s what the grade looks like between our house and my office:

There’s a gentle slope down from our house to the river, a nice ride along the river, and then… well, it’s pretty much an uphill slog all the way to the office.

That first ride was pretty tough. People here take their bicycling very seriously.This is what bicyclists in Redmond look like, all of the time:

Which is to say that, as I panted up the hill in my rusting Spalding (don’t they make footballs?), I felt a bit outclassed as an endless stream of muscular, Spandex-covered rear ends pumped past me, each bicycle festooned with a minimum of three (3) flashing safety lights. “On your left,” they would say as they passed in their Day-Glo jerseys. So polite!

I stuck to it, though. After two or three weeks, I was able to truck up the hill without standing in the saddle or feeling like I’d enjoy a good side-of-the-road barf upon reaching the summit. That felt good. And there’s something to be said to starting the day with fresh air and a bit of scenery; my ride goes right along the river for about a mile, where I see things like this:

One thing that bicycling made me realize was how oddly isolating cars are. Cyclists are friendly folk. They acknowledge each other with a friendly nod. Strangers zip up to me and comment on the weather, or ask each other about their Biking Gear. (This appears to be a safe topic with any real cyclist, and if you wear jeans when you bike you are safe from inquiry.)

Now the weather’s beginning to turn. I saw some crunchy leaves on my last few rides. The mornings are chilly now, and there’s rarely a 0% chance of rain in the forecast. I have the feeling my bike’s going to spend another 9 months in the garage. But it’s coming back out when it gets warm and dry again, because there’s nothing quite like coming to work, changing your shirt, and feeling like you’ve already gotten something done.

Happy Friday Friends!

Today, we are the guest bloggers over at Homewares by Hand .  We made gelato in celebration of Jessica’s trip to Italy.

Please know that we do not usually make ice cream/gelato at 7am. It’s just how things turn out around here sometimes.

Since it would be cruel to write a post without a little photo of our girl, here she is playing with some toys at the TotSpot Cafe last week:

Toys!

Beatrice loves duckies. We’re not sure how it started. It could have been her duckie blanket. It could have been her duckie towel. It could even have been her rubber duckies. But whenever she sees a duckie, she smiles and shouts Duckie! Quack quack quack quack! You can imagine her delight when Kelly brought this book home from the library.

Beatrice loved this book so much that almost every time I carried her past the bookcase, she would shout Duckies! and point at the shelf where the book was kept, twisting toward the book until I pulled it from the shelf, at which point she would clutch it to her and again exclaim: Duckies! Duckies! QUACK QUACK QUACK! (This was my cue to jump in for a family quacking session.)

Kelly had the idea to make one of these duckie cupcakes to give Beatrice on her birthday. Here is her reaction to the real-life Duckie Cupcake.

Beatrice and the Duckie Cupcake from Jonathan on Vimeo.

A few days ago, I got a letter from the Puget Sound Blood Center.

PSBC is responsible for blood donation drives. I’ve been donating blood regularly for most of the last decade, so I’ve been in many of their sketchy vans and filled out many of their Scantron survey forms.

The letter was in an unremarkable envelope and looked like junk mail. PSBC doesn’t send much junk; as I recall, the last time they sent me something in the mail, they wanted to give me a free cookbook if I gave twice during the coming summer. (I earned the cookbook, but somehow a cookbook that reminded me of plastic bags full of blood seemed like a bad idea, so I didn’t pick it up.) Maybe they wanted to congratulate me on some sort of gallon status, or ask me to recruit my friends, or mention how great it was that I was an O Positive donor, the most popular kind of donor there is.

It turned out to be an actual letter, as in a page of text addressed to me.

I skimmed a couple of words, guessing it was a form letter I could throw away. But then I hit a couple of words you don’t ever want to read in a letter from a medical institution, words like “test” and “positive” and “regretfully”. My stomach knotted a little and I started from the beginning, slowly.

The author of the letter patiently explained that PSBC runs screening tests on all the blood they get to see if it might contain a disease or anything else that would make it unfit for transfusion. If the blood fails the screening test, they reject it, and run some followup confirmation tests so that they can let the donor know about the disease, if there is one.

My blood, which I always assumed was pretty good stuff, had been failing the screening tests more often than they’d like. The confirmation tests never showed anything, though, so technically there was nothing wrong with my blood–they just couldn’t use it.

The tone of the letter was reassuring but firm: while they appreciated my past contributions to their blood banks, they–regretfully–had to ask me not to donate any more.

Donating blood isn’t exactly a good time, but still, the letter stung a little. Giving blood’s always been a part of my life. I was that Giving Blood Guy at work–the one who tries to drag you along to the cheerfully colored minivan where they’re taking donations, and sends tweets while blood is actually leaving his body. I saw myself one day humbly rejecting the enormous 15 Gallon Pin that they’d no doubt want to hand me in an awards ceremony.

Now my blood donation days are unexpectedly over, and I’ll have only fond memories of the time spent in the back of a van with a needle in my arm. Farewell, PSBC! I’m thankful for the time we spent together, and I know there will be many others to take my place, others with fresher and less complicated blood than my own. I wish you all the best.

Beatrice is not a fan of naps. She really, really hates them. In fact, when Jonathan is home (like today), she almost forces herself to stay awake because she cannot stand to be napping while we’re out folding laundry having fun! This morning, she very clearly said “No!” when I was taking her to her room for her nap. Um, sorry little one who refuses to learn how to crawl and instead is focusing on her verbal skills, saying no to your Momma is not an option for you! I have a feeling we’re in for a wild ride!

Despite the sass, or perhaps because of it, I still think she’s the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen!

The big news in the McPherson household is that today is the day Beatrice decided she’d complete the full roll from back to front! She doesn’t love being on her back because it’s too stationary. On her front, she’s able to scoot along and do all sorts of dandy things. Today she was able to relieve some of her frustration and roll over from her back to her front! Once I stopped crying (while thinking of all the other milestones that are going to come so quickly and soon she’ll be in college…blah blah blah), I called Jonathan and then I made this video for you to enjoy.

A couple of  things to note: she LOVES pulling up her dress and showing off her belly-very embarrassing for me, hilarious for her. Her grunting cracks me up. What a little miracle! We love you, little Bea!

And now we’re going to work on her next “trick”-the afternoon nap. Here’s hoping number four is her magic month for napping!