So we’re talking about intellectual freedom at a staff meeting, and a staff member talks about asking a patron to turn off a video of a man receiving a blow job because the woman next to him complained. And this is what the librarian said:
“Who wants to sit next to a blow job?”
Who indeed?
Maya had her first real poop today. By real, I mean the kind from real food, not from breast milk. Think all poop is the same? Clearly you are not familiar with breast milk poopies. Excrement from a breast fed baby smells a bit nutty — like the smell of a slightly sweaty neck — while excrement from a formula fed baby smells like what it is — a weapon of mass destruction. We should not drop bombs, we should drop cargo loads of formula-poop diapers. Judging from how that smell could fill a room, we could take over an entire country, or at least sneak up on them while they were gagging from the smell.
We kind of forgot that Maya was growing up, and is five and a half months old. When Ben was 4 months old, we gave him his first real food — creamed carrots and sweet potatoes (”real” being a vague definition, of course). We took about 497 photos of the event. With Maya, we pushed back the real food issue, knowing what it means when a child is still in diapers, until she grabbed a slice of Albertson’s 9-grain deli bread out of my hands two nights ago and started gnawing on it (read: 4 grams of fiber per slice). She had applesauce, spaghetti and yogurt that night. The next morning she smashed some pancake into her hair and clothes, and that evening she had some more toast. She gnawed on a couple of carrots, too.
I missed her first real-food poop. Marti was home today and changed her, but of course he called to report (this, by the way, is how you know you’ve arrived: when your spouse calls you at work to describe the size and consistency of your child’s poop). The flax seeds from the bread came out whole and untouched (well, sort of) and the spaghetti? Well, there it was. Not only that, she pooped while she was sleeping and didn’t even wake up. By the time Marti smelled the poop, it was an emergency situation that required softening and removal via the shower (note to self: bleach later). Some days I miss being home.
But really, it’s a milestone, the first real poop. *Sniff* (no pun intended) My baby’s growing up.
The official results of the triathlon:
Final time: 2 hours, 8 minutes, 40 seconds. I placed 7th in my age group.
Swim time: 28 minutes, 44 seconds. This is not particularly surprising, since my goal was not to swim fast, but to complete the course without getting any brown, icky water in my mouth, which required a lot of stopping and spitting.
1st transition: 4 minutes, 16 seconds. Not too bad, since I had to peel off my shirt and put a (mostly) dry replacement on. I also added a fanny pack that had a water bladder, energy bars and a gel (they taste disgusting, by the way).
Bike ride: 56 terrifying minutes, 2 paralyzing seconds. At first I thought I must have missed a loop when I rode this, because people kept riding by me, and I swear one person passed me twice. Turns out a bunch of people got lost. It’s not surprising; who would have guessed the trail really and truly went over huge rock slides and through deep arroyos? I checked the race map later and could see that there were no other loops (I also asked one of the people working the race to make sure before I got off the course). So, I think I made 12 terrifying miles in just under an hour primarily because I followed directions and stayed on course. The real story is that I had to walk the bike down cliffs and sometimes had to just close my eyes, let go of the brakes and hope I didn’t die on the other side. By the end of the course I was sliding around corners and I did a bad-ass finish onto the sandy beach, where Marti caught my fat bouncing on camera as I ran the bike to the transition area.
2nd transition: 56 seconds. Pretty fast, eh? It went like this: park the bike, drop the helmet, put on my trusty ball cap and start running. Except — oh yeah, the fanny pack. With a liter of water in it. But what’s another couple of pounds? I am breastfeeding, after all. So, I ran a 5K trail, over rocks, through sand, on concrete, on pavement, and I did it in…38 minutes. Sound familiar?
5K run: 38 minutes, 46 seconds. This is not an impressive time, of course, except that it’s as fast as I ran the first 5K of the season and it came after swimming half a mile and mountain biking another 12.
So, over all, a good showing for a first triathlon. Ben was a real trooper, cheering and helping, and he made good use of the sand while I was racing.
Maya was her beautiful self, pictured here smiling, despite her lip. She wasn’t too happy with mama, though — the bottle hurt her lip, so she wouldn’t eat, and was more than ready for me to cross the finish line so I could feed her. 
It might be a while before the next one: we blew a tire heading to this one and spent 2 1/2 hours on the road, waiting for a tire iron. Marti says I need to pace myself. My next race, however, will be a nice, easy 5K on November 5th. And hopefully, someday, all this running will win over the fat and I will actually lose a pound or two.
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