Bike MS: For Grandma

I went on a very important bike ride on Saturday - Owen and I biked the Bike MS: Twin Cities Ride to raise money to help people living with Multiple Sclerosis. This ride was extra important to me because I rode in memory of my Grandma, Edith Anderson, and in honor of my Aunt Elaine.

Most of my memories of my Grandma are of her in a wheelchair in a nursing home. Why? Because my Grandma was diagnosed with MS when she was in her late 50s. She spent fourteen years in a nursing home and MS took her life when she was only 73. My Aunt Elaine is now living with the disease and MS is making life a challenge for my Aunt, my Uncle and my cousins and their families.

I don't often say that I hate things but I'll say this - I hate MS. I hate what it does to people. What it did to my Grandma. What it takes away from families. I don't want to see this disease continue. I don't want to see families suffer as their loved ones struggle with this disease. And that's why I decided to ride on Saturday - because I wanted to raise money to help stop MS and, until a cure is found, to help people who are living with the disease.

Grandma Edith and Grandpa Howard Anderson taken long before MS entered their lives. Their wedding picture - August 30, 1936.

So on Saturday Owen and I rode the 52 mile route made up of miles of rolling hills along country roads and part of the lovely Gateway Trail. We rode as part of a team Team OS led by our captain, Eric Fellows, a friend of mine from high school who I hadn't seen in about 25 years! It was great fun to ride with a team but the greatest thing of all is that our little team of five - Owen, Eric, Matt, Val and I raised $2,605.00!!

It was a new bicycling experience for me, pedaling mile after mile and knowing that I was riding for my Grandma and Aunt Elaine. I found myself tearing up a couple of times on the ride, and not because the hills were too big or the ride was too long! No, I found myself crying because of the memories of my Grandma. Because my Aunt is living with MS today. Because I hate this disease. And because I felt that by fundraising and pedaling away the miles I was able to do a little something to help beat MS and help those living with the disease.

Owen and I after biking the Bike MS: Twin Cities Ride on May 12, 2012

Thanks to all of you who sponsored me and Owen and Team OS on this ride. Thanks for making donations to help fight MS.

Oh, and guess what? If you haven't made a donation I'm sure to do the ride again next year so you can sponsor me next year.

Or, if you feel so inclined, you can still make a donation for this years's ride up through June 1st :)

Just follow this link:
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/MNMBikeEvents?px=5203972&pg=personal&fr_id=17384

Big Day - No Fooling

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 called SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education). This organization also hosts a benefit bike ride each year called the Tour de Nick and, guess what, Owen and I did this ride two years ago and last year all four of us did the ride. I think it's safe to say that 30 Days of Biking turned our family into a Bicycling Family!

Ryan and I with our 30 Days of Biking spoke cards. Picture by Patrick Stephenson

Consider doing the 30 Days of Biking challenge yourself. It's easy to sign up - just go to www.30daysofbiking.com. And honestly, it's not that hard to complete the challenge. You just get on your bike and pedal it a little bit each day.

(Added on April 1st - This just in! Though I never thought something like this would happen to me a couple of days ago Molly Guthrey, a journalist at the Pioneer Press, contacted me to see if she could write about how 30 Days of Biking changed my life for her Turning Point column. It was sorta strange for me to be on the other side of the story and be interviewed and I felt like I babbled the whole time. But Molly was able to sort through my wordiness and wrote a great story. Click HERE to read it.)

The second Big Day activity happening on April Fools is I will be playing in my first Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra concert. I haven't played in anything resembling a concert since I was a junior in high school when I played the violin so I am kind of nervous. Actually I'm a lot nervous. I'm worried I'll do something like drop my pick an lose it in the middle of a song or play the wrong notes. I joined the MMO so I would get back to playing my mandolin - and I sure have been playing it. The music we're playing, fourteen songs are on the schedule, is difficult and I'm still not proficient at playing all of the songs. But I'm way better at playing now than I was when I joined the MMO three months ago (and have gotten good at following along on the songs where I can't play the really difficult parts). So, ready or not, I'll be there ready to play. Nervous? Yes. But willing to give it a go.

Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra - minus a few players who were missing on picture night - Photo: MMO

So, if you want to listen to some great music Sunday evening, head on over to Edinborough Park in Edina for our 7:00 concert. It's free! (no fooling). If you can't make this concert the MMO has several more in the months to come. The performance schedule is at the MMO website: www.minnesotamandolinorchestra.org.

As for the Third Big Day happening, well, it's kind of a sad thing but something I want to mention. April 1st was the birth date of our dear Border Terrier, Chaucer. We had to say good-bye to Chaucer last October. Chaucer (Saga Hills Chaucer's Folly JE) would have been sixteen this April Fools Day. We miss him. He was a good dog.

Doing Enough

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 person's worth is equal to the amount of money they make. Frankly, I’m pretty hard on myself when it comes to this. Dang it! It’s time to be nicer to myself. Time to be as kind to myself as my dearest friends and family members are nice and kind to me. 

I just finished my billing for my 2011 writing work. And, in an effort to be nice to myself, to give myself something tangible to look at to remind myself that I DO in fact work hard and do a lot in the course of a year, I took a picture of my stack of stories written and published in 2011. Seventeen stories.

I’m not going to say, like I so very often do, “But some people write more” or “But I didn’t get paid much for these stories.” No buts. No comparisons to other writers, to other people. Because life isn’t just those seventeen stories that I got paid for - it was a lot of other writing and a whole lot of living that can't be measured or invoiced. It was the hours of talking to people so I could write those stories. The hours of being a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend during happy times and tears. Of reading with kids at school. Of long bike rides and walks. Of tiny moments that made me smile.

Maybe we should all consider stepping away from the world of “doing enough” and consider the possibility that “doing enough” may actually be too much. Maybe we should actually DO less and BE more. 

More present. More engaged with our friends and families. More willing to have coffee with a friend. To play with the kids. To sit still and enjoy moments and make memories.

It’s something to think about.

Tickets to Happiness!!

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 we enjoyed the unseasonably nice weather - more family time. More time feeling loved and appreciated.

On Sunday, my actual birthday, Owen, the kids and I went on a bike ride on the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis and then went to a wonderful bike shop/coffee shop, Angry Catfish. Later we settled in at home to open presents and make pizzas for dinner. I mentioned that presents in my family tend to be somewhat silly or practical - very often things that we would have purchased anyway. Owen tells me that the kids had a lot to do with picking out my gifts this year. They picked out some cool things for me, like the Kuhn Rikon mini-prep kitchen knife that Ryan picked out for me (probably in part because I know he wanted it, too!)

Rose presented a package carefully wrapped in tissue paper for me to open. This one, Owen said, was a present he didn't know about. I opened it up and found the sweetest gift from my lovely and sweet daughter. Rose made two little paper folders - one for Owen and one for me. On them were the words, "Your Tickets to HAPPINESS!!! and tucked inside were hand lettered "Tickets to Happiness."

Rose had noticed, she told us, that we say we seldom find time to sit still and read, or fly model airplanes or kites, or walk in the garden, or just, well, sit still and feel free of obligations and to-do lists. So Rose's solution was to give us Tickets to Happiness to cash in whenever we wanted some time off.

Even if I don't cash in all of my tickets (though I will, I'm sure, take advantage of "2 hours of whatever you want" soon) Rose's gift has already served a great purpose. She reminded me that I already have the  Tickets to Happiness - and they are not tickets or things but people -  Friends. Relatives. Neighbors. Parents. Brothers. Nephew. And especially Owen, Ryan and my Rose. My Family. I am so blessed.