Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

April 1st 2012 - April Fools Day - is going to be a big day in my life - and I'm not kidding! First, as most of you know, I'll be staring my 5th round of 30 Days of Biking on April 1st. 30 Days of Biking is a challenge to ride your bike every day for 30 days. I did my first 30 Days of Biking two years ago  during April of 2010 and it really changed my life. Seriously. I'm now a way more active person than I ever was before and my whole family has taken up bicycling. We now spend a lot of family time with bike-related activities. Just today we biked the Midtown Greenway so we could stop at a bike shop/coffee shop called Freewheel Midtown . While at Freewheel we visited with Patrick Stephenson (aka @patiomensch), one of the 30 Days of Biking founders and got fun spoke cards for our bikes. After that, we headed over to another bike & coffee shop, Angry Catfish , for a benefit bike art auction called Big Ring: 2nd Gear . The art auction is a benefit for an organization...

At various points in my life, way more often than I like to admit,  I think of myself as not very productive. Uh, that's so not true but I get it in my brain that I’m sitting on my arse half the time. I’m not. I do think I need to reprogram that part of my brain, though, that part that tells me I’m doing not enough. All I need to do to remind myself that I’m doing “enough” is to look at my kids and see how cool they are - and remember that though luck has an awful lot to do with how people turn out I have also worked hard to be there for my kids and to be as good of a mom as I can be for them. I believe this does make a difference. But sometimes, even with the cool kids as a reminders, it’s difficult to believe that I am doing enough, especially when it comes to my writing work - probably because my writing work doesn’t bring in a ton of money and this darn world we live in puts so much value on the almighty dollar. And sometimes I get caught up in that line of thinking - that a pe...

I celebrated my 45th birthday on the 25th of March. We're pretty low-key about birthdays in my family but always have a fun time. My family - that is my family of origin -  makes a point of going out to eat together to celebrate birthdays. Our dining experience is more about family time than fine food - our favorite Birthday dinner spots are Perkins and Q. Cumbers - and if we give gifts they tend to be somewhat silly or practical. This year on the day before my Birthday I, Owen and the kids met my parents, my two brothers and my two-year-old nephew at Q. Cumbers for a fun birthday dinner. It may sound silly but while I was up loading my plate at the salad bar buffet I had this overwhelming feeling of being loved - not because of the salad bar offerings (which were wonderful) but because my family members all took time to have dinner with me. In our busy world, spending time with people is one of the best gifts of all! Then we walked around Centennial Lakes Park and talked while...

Some rain is mixed in with our sunny weather during our spring break Staycation - but no worries!  Rainy times are certainly good times to read and the much needed moisture sure has turned our grass green! I'm happy to report that I did in fact sit still one afternoon and I finished reading a book, Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton and I've been reading a bit each day. Here's the rundown on the stack of books I'm reading right now... First here's a picture of the books that I'm reading. I like having a visual reference and you might, too. From the top: Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef,  a memoir by Gabrielle Hamilton: I started this book a week ago and finished it up on Monday afternoon. On the surface it's a book about Gabrielle and how she became the owner and chef of famous New York restaurant, Prune, but it's also a book about family and marriage. The last sentence in the book left me si...

The kids are now on spring break. While many of our friends are driving somewhere or jetting off to great vacation destinations we are having a staycation and sticking around home. We have summer-like weather here with temperatures in the 70s and couldn't possibly have nicer weather for a week spent around home. One of my goals for this staycation is to read. And by read I mean really read, like in a comfortable chair or on the couch...not in the bathroom like I usually do which, though a fine enough place to read a page or two, is not the ideal location to relax while reading a book. Though generally no one bothers you if you are reading in the bathroom... When I was a kid I spent hours sitting on the couch reading books. So did Owen. I'm glad to see that my kids are as hooked on reading as we were as kids. Both Rose and Ryan read a ton. We just got a few new books from our local bookstore,  Monkey See, Monkey Read , and from the library just to get enough reading materia...

Today is overcast and dreary but I found a little something that brightened my day. After my regular Monday morning coffee at Goodbye Blue Monday  (this morning fellow writer  Joy Riggs  was there - check out her recent story in the Star Tribune on our lovely little town of Northfield - and we're usually joined by writer  Christine Bernier Lienke as well) I headed over to one of the shops - Rooms by Tagg 2 just to take a peek. Rooms by Tagg 2 has tons of cute & clever home decor items like books, frames, mini-frying pans (perfect for one fried egg - I bought one. It's turquoise in keeping with my favorite color theme ) kitchen gadgets and more. I found one thing that I just had to have that really brightened my day - in more ways than one. It's a box of matches with great bike artwork on it.  I love the vintage looking bike artwork and also the quote on the side which I thought was perfect for this dreary day - "Keep Calm and Peddle On" - Yep, wh...

Signs of Spring in Webster, Minnesota: The snow, what little we had this winter, is pretty much gone My kids have been playing outside, winter jackets forgotten The temperature has been in the 60s and looks to stay there The fields are muddy - and so is Rocket the dog when he comes inside from our hikes People are out flying where I live at SkyHarbor Airpark (as in people are flying airplanes. I haven't seen any flying people - at least not yet) I visited two bike shops in two days ( Valley Bike & Ski and Milltown Cycles ) Owen and I biked two days in a row!! and.... I got new bar tape on my road bike!! Owen and I stopped in to Milltown Cycles on Saturday to check out bikes and to see the work Ben and Curtis are doing to the shop. The handlebar tape on my bike was white and pretty dirty so I decided, with a little encouragement from Ben and Owen, to put bright new turquoise bar tape on my Giant Avail road bike. Turquoise is my favorite color - it reminds m...

Eight days ago I finished my 30 Days of Writing challenge. The point for me in doing this challenge was to get back to work on one project I started, oh, almost ten years ago and to kick start a new project.  Neither project has a deadline or a real concrete end in sight. My goal was to write content and then see where the projects are going and then decide where to go with the material I have. And I did this. I wrote - a lot. And it felt good. It was kind of freeing to not think about word counts and deadlines, about how to write with a particular publication or audience in mind like I usually do. I felt very much like a "real" writer during my 30 Days.  But at the same time I felt a little panicked. Like I didn’t know where I was going. Like much of what I wrote wouldn’t be worth a second look. And a little bit like, "uh, what's the point of writing if I don't actually get some of this content refined and published?"  Yeah. Well. What IS the point of wri...