Two Wheels One Baby

Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. Swedish for “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.” My Madisonian friend, Sam, first introduced me to this phrase a couple months ago, and I’ve adopted it as my life mantra. The phrase can speak volumes of a person’s disposition, extending farther than feelings toward bad weather.

Blues & Boredom
Normally Winter does not get to me like it does other people. But living in the city is different. And even though we can get ourselves out of town with Zipcar, there hasn’t been much snow this year…only A LOT of rain….which in my opinion, is the worst weather. Cold, rain – yuk! Any day that has not been raining, even cloudy and cold, I’ve made it a point to bike or walk somewhere and this has helped me through this winter with a newborn.

And then there are Saturdays like this past one. The rain started Saturday morning and I saw what the forecast had in store for us…the bitchiness set in and didn’t let up until the following morning. Saturday consisted of Kyle making is knife block and not understanding how to make Annika happy and me rolling my eyes constantly and making Annika happy. These are the days where that saying, “Kids will make a beautiful marriage ugly” makes sense. Tears.

Sunday morning and daylight savings, Spring Forward, (also, Kyle’s morning to sleep in) was much better. Woke up, geared up with my Marmot pants, Mountain Hardware jacket, rain boots and the stroller decked out and we went on a stroll through professor slums that is Brattle Street to Darwins LTD to sip coffee. There were many new rivers and ponds from all the rain.

Blogging
While I was at Darwins, I read a New York Times article, “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand.” The subject of the article was about mommy bloggers…me! Blogging as a mom is very diary-ish and a great way to relate to fellow mothers. I learned how some stay at home mommies make six figures doing this – nuts!

Today I took a walk around Fresh Pond to see what the damage was after three days of continuous rain and to have fun in my duck hunting boot. A guy passed me running and stopped to say, “I thought I was hard core.”

(A guest blog by Mr. Megan ~ Kyle Ramey)

We have amazingly good friends. Mike and Christen, for example, have been giving me a different Shun kitchen knife for each birthday and/or other such event for a few years now, to the point that I have now amassed 6 of these hand-made japanese objects of kitchen porn. They are beautiful beyond words. They are balanced, solid, and substantial. They mean business. They come sharpened with a frighteningly good edge, and when ours eventually dull I use only japanese water stones (1000# and 6000# grit) to carefully put a fresh, wickedly effective edge on them again. The large santoku will go through an acorn squash with just a firm suggestion of a push. I probably like these knives a little more than is strictly healthy, but I blame an upbringing steeped in the use and care of quality tools, now squeezed into the mold of urban garage-less condo living… these are now the best tools I get to use on a regular basis. In my house, tomatoes are not crushed as they are sliced, they are surgically divided.

Until now, I’ve kept them in their original boxes in a kitchen drawer. For everyday cutting jobs we have a nice set of Henckels, but for the really good cooking prep sessions I always go for The Good Stuff. So we’ve certainly used them, but I always knew I wanted them to be out where I can see them (and lust after them). The problem is that the magnetic knife holders I can find anywhere around here are all an exposed steel rail bar magnet, which will scratch your knife blade if you’re not perfectly careful everytime. I wanted to do better. These knives DESERVE better. So I hatched a plan to secure a good piece of suitable wood, get some magnets, drill them in from the back side of the wood to right below the front surface, and then have nothing but wood on the face of my holder.

A quick email to my good friend Terry Bigelow, who runs Heritage Drum Works (he makes drum kits the hard way, using solid hardwood staves instead of ply) for advice and help went a long way. Terry first sent me a link to a website for rare earth magnets, then asked for my address and mailed me (!) a perfect piece of mahogany. As I may have mentioned, we have amazing friends. The roll of 50 magnets was about . If I had found and bought the wood myself, I think it would be around -, depending on what I’d found.

The Materials:
So here is the as-yet unmolested piece of mahogany, the smallest of the Shun knives, the roll of 50 1/4 inch rare earth magnets, some layout tools and some coffee.

These are very, very strong. I was optimistic that I’d be able to get them close enough to the surface of the wood for them to grab the knives while still not being seen.

Testing the depth:
I decided to do a test first, to see how much wood-like material could be between the magnets and the knives with them still working. So I used a big book, putting 2 magnets in the pages, covering them up, and seeing if the knife would still stick.
It sticks, but not as well as I’d like, and there are only bout 15 pages between the magnets and the knife. That’s not good news… with no drill press it’s gonna be awfully hard to drill riiiiight up under the surface 30 or 40 or 50 times and not screw up once. Enter: doubt.

It sticks, but barely. But I decided to try a few of them out in the wood anyway, just in case. Enter: Denial.

Redneck drill stop depth gauge… masking tape. This is as deep as I dared go. At this depth I could feel the wood at the tip of the bit moving as the bit turned and compressed the fibers ahead of it. Danger, Will Robinson. So if it didn’t work at this depth, then it wouldn’t work this way at all. Enter: Desperation.

So I tried one. It had almost no grab on the knife whatsoever. I tried a second one, going as deep as I could go without poking through, and again… no grab. I was not going to be able to pull this off the way I’d been dreaming of. I opened a beer and pondered my options. Enter: Depression. As you can see by the magnet on the right, I decided to try to drill one just below flush with the surface. It held very, very well, and the knife couldn’t touch it. So this would be Plan B. Drill them into the face, and make it look as good as possible.

So here’s what I decided on. I laid out the knives the way I wanted to display them (not the actual order pictured here), then traced the blades on the surface of the wood lightly. Within each outline, I spaced magnets going up from bottom-to-top the same way, with the spaces getting wider as they go up. I wanted it to look somewhat uniform.

With all the holes marked up, I put in a brad-point 1/4″ drill bit for cleaner edges and set about carefully drilling each hole. I had to eyeball it. My neck is killing me today from standing at the counter and looking down for 3 hours. If I drilled a little too deep, I’d add some sawdust back in, and each magnet got 2 drops of super glue as it went in. Only one pair of these matches, the rest are all shaped for the actual knife they hold. All were recessed about 1 millimeter below the surface of the wood… no scratchy!

Here we see all of the magnets in, and it’s ready for a quick final sanding and coat of mineral oil (food safe).

After sanding and mineral oil, ready to mount on the wall. Love the ribbon grain of mahogany! Excellent choice, Terry.

The finished product. I hope I did them justice. Cheers Mikey!

I, like David Byrne, am a lifestyle cyclist. The predominant reason that I ride is to get from A to B, not for pleasure…even though I get a lot of pleasure from doing it. Because bicycling is a necessity for me, there’s never been a safer, less hilly, prettier route option. When I moved to Madison in 2001, I knew it was a bicycle friendly city, and even though I didn’t have a map, I got on and rode and I taught myself where the safest, least hilly and prettiest routes were. And then I moved to Boston, one of the five worst cycling cities, in 2008. Even though I was a pretty seasoned urban cyclist, the car culture and poor condition of the roads were definitely daunting. I got over there not being a bicycle map to work with and yet again, I learned which routes were a better fit for me. Not everyone is like me, which is why I believe that knowing the safe cycling routes is the number one excuse people use not to engage in the activity.

This past Wednesday, March 10th, was a huge day for bicycling culture. Google added a bicycling option in addition to car, public transportation, and walking in the directions drop down menu. Here are my assumptions of why this will transform our culture:

1. Accessibility – everyone knows where to find and how to use Google maps and directions
2. One algorithm or governing body – with Google managing the code and symbols for every location, the maps will be easy to read and transferable between cities. No more proprietary dotted, slashed or solid lines.
3. Problems? – no one is more passionate about road conditions and safe routes than fellow cyclists and they will be sure to submit correct information via the ultra-slick application. This can be accessed after the respective map or directions have been called up, by right clicking on the map and selecting “Report a Problem”.
4. Subliminal cultural effect – just the presence of the bicycling option on the directions drop down menu will have an effect on people that they may not realize. Yes, people do get around on a bicycle. It’s not an activity reserved for second class citizens, weekend warrior triathletes or rails to trails pleasure cruisers.

Here’s the bicycle map of my stomping ground, Cambridge and Boston.

My best friend, Mary, called me the other night to tell me that The Bachelor (brain numbing reality tv show), was at Jade Mountain where her and Joe were married in October 2007. Kyle and I were privileged enough to be invited to witness this beautiful event in a place most people would call the closest thing to paradise. “Nooooo!” was my reaction to this voicemail, because I almost liked that Jade Mountain was off the radar from the masses. In my mind, Mary was a pioneer of the destination wedding, only she didn’t invite a whole mass of people, which pretty much defeats the point. It was just the four of us. The morning following the apparent Bachelor finale, I almost spit soy milk out of my nose when Ellen gave Jade Mountain vacation packages to her game players.
It’s really hard not to sound like snob here, but I’m going to go ahead and say it. Please, Jade Mountain, for the love of God, don’t turn into Sandals. On the flight to and from St. Lucia that glorious week, Kyle and I noticed a ton of couples wearing air brushed “Just Married” tees with “bride” or “groom” on the rear carrying Sandals garment bags with their wedding apparel…and the women wore their veils…on the plane…ugh. This is just depressing. What I can’t figure out with Sandals, is why don’t the couples just go to Florida? I mean, it’s not like they plan on leaving the resort to explore or see the local community?
Looking at these pictures and reliving those blissful memories was hard enough without considering that we are in the final stretch of winter here in Cambridge, MA. What stands out most in my mind about this trip

• architecture
• vegetation
• blue tones
• INFINITY POOL!!!
• Campari
• snorkeling
• windsurfing
• walking into town, pickup trucking it back up the hill
• private beach cabanas
• doing Mary’s hair poolside
• witnessing our best friends become man and wife at sunset on the beach
• rooftop toast and dinner

The contractions began on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 11 pm. Kyle was watching the end of the movie, Watchmen, when I came down and told him that contractions had started. This was the 3rd time they began and I was 10 days late so we were hoping this was the real deal. The contractions weren’t painful yet, just present, so I couldn’t sleep. They started to become more regular at 2 am and I woke Kyle up to call Tara Kenny, our midwife. Over the previous 7 months, Tara had made home visits monthly, then bi-weekly, then weekly. I came to anticipate each visit as it was really nice to talk about what my body was going through. In the end, she became a close friend.
Back to the birth. I turned on the tv to keep me from going crazy in the middle of the night and The Cosby Show was on…and while I chuckled, the contractions got REAL. After reading every birth story I could get my hand on, I was disappointed not to find a description of what the contractions were like and I swore I would try my best to convey the feeling. As my friend, Tracy Blankenship, told me…contractions feel like “the countdown”, which is the feeling one gets when they have 10 seconds to find a bathroom before their drawers are completely wrecked. In other words, the worst intestinal cramps you can imagine. There’s definitely sweating and concentrating involved, but there’s also a menstrual element to it. At that point in the birth, contractions were 10 minutes apart and about 30 seconds long. To attempt relaxation I hopped in the shower and cranked up the heat. Holding the shower head directly on my stomach made a HUGE difference in lessening the contraction intensity. And this is when I knew it was time to fill the birthing tub with water, which begins my fondest memories.
First Stage. It was about 4 am when I climbed into the tub. We set it up a month prior near our gynormous windows in the living area. Kyle hooked up the garden hose to our kitchen sink and turned on the hot water. There were also two heating pads within the tub that maintained the temperature. When the water was full to the recommended line, I could sit cross legged on the floor and the water level would sit right below my shoulders, but I did a lot of belly-up floating with my hands and the ground holding me. Kyle laid on our small couch in the fetal position trying to sleep while I worked through the contractions. Our mac played a Pandora radio station that I specifically made for the birth with a lot of Sigur Ros, but it would also insert some Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service and Jose Gonzalez. When I first laid down in the tub, I rested my head on the edge with my eyes looking up out the window at the stars. Slowly, the dawn started to show and contractions got more intense as the sun came up.
Second Stage. Right about the time that Tara came over, around 8:30 a.m., I had started to pace and at the onset of a contraction, I would lean against a counter and concentrate. Tara guided me through the hard ones. I would switch between the tub, to our bed upstairs, to the kitchen and the shower. Audra, another wonderful midwife and Tara’s backup arrived around noon. They both fed me water, smoothies and applesauce. Tara also took my temperature, monitored the baby’s heart rate with a stethoscope, and monitored my heart rate periodically throughout labor.
Transition. During the hardest part, the transition stage, I was on our bed with the birthing ball and the contractions would last 2-3 minutes and I would take a nap in between. Tara had me walk down to the shower and every time I got up to walk, the contractions came faster. In the shower, I got down on my hands and knees and felt the need to push. After Tara did a hand check to measure my dilation, I was still a centimeter away from full dilation. So I worked through another hour on our bed with Kitty standing by… at one point I thought, I’m not going to have the energy and just wanted the whole thing to go away and let me sleep.
Pushing. Around 5 pm, I got in the tub and started pushing. For motivation, Tara told me to feel inside me for the head. I thought she was crazy and I was pretty delirious at this point, but I did. This was equivalent to seeing the 12 mile marker in a half marathon. I could feel the head and one small, unbroken bag of water in front of it. The pushing then became a fight to the finish and even though I was beyond exhausted, I knew that it was almost over and the surprise would be here. When the head effaced, it truly felt like a ring of fire. Tara coached me to slow down and take deep breaths so I wouldn’t tear anything, so as hard as it was, I put the brakes on. The head slowly came out, thirty seconds went by and the body came out under water. Tara handed me the baby and I was able to see that I had a GIRL! Annika laid on me crying as exhaustion blanketed me. I looked at Kyle and wept.
Post-birth. Tara and Audra helped me out of the tub and lied me on our couch covered with a bunch of chuck cloths. They helped Annika nurse on me to stimulate contractions so they could retrieve the placenta and Kyle unintentionally sat right across from as they did this…first time I had a laugh in 24 hours. Now it was time to pee, which seemed daunting. They helped me to the bathroom and as soon as I started peeing, blood came gushing out, which made me feel faint. I had to lie on the bathroom floor. Tara and Audra told me I had to urinate because of all the water I drank so I lied in the shower and let myself go while they sprayed me off. I still felt faint so I laid on the floor for a good hour and half on my back. At one point I was scooting myself across the floor on a towel. The three of them wanted to feed me something substantial, but I just wanted smoothies and to pass out. Tara’s husband brought over an air mattress and we “slept” downstairs in our living area with Annika in between us. Under strict instruction from Tara, I was not allowed to walk to the bathroom, so I used a large stainless steel bowl placed bedside to pee in all night. Quite the humbling experience. Kyle earns father of the year just for emptying and cleaning this bowl some 5 times throughout that night.
The Morning After. My body was still pretty exhausted, but I was on a high every time I noticed the small bundle laying there and from what my body did the day before. “Did I really do that?” I kept asking myself. I felt so empowered. One of my favorite shows, CBS Sunday Morning was on and Kyle made me a HUGE breakfast. Tara visited us that night to help with breastfeeding and check on Annika and I.
Thank goodness Kyle had the week off from work! He helped me walk around the condo, take Sitz bathes and cook ungodly amounts of food while I taught myself and coaxed Annika on breastfeeding. This brings me to my huge brand endorsement – EARTH MAMA ANGEL BABY! I would not have had an easy of postpartum recovery without their products:

1. new mama bottom spray – absolutely essential! I had a small, unstitched tear that would burn like crazy every time I peed and this stuff would alleviate the burn 100%.
2. happy mama spray – refreshing facial spray that gave me energy and positive glow
3. bottom balm – for after bathroom visits, this gave me a nice cooling feeling on all my under-region
4. nipple butter – great for the first week of breastfeeding when your nipples are in so much pain and you feel like quitting

They also make great pregnancy and baby products. My Aunt Kris bought me the whole line and it was by far, the most useful present I received!
People ask me if I had the choice to do a home birth again, would I? ABSOLUTELY! I treated my pregnancy like a training period for a marathon. Three times a week for Yoga and twice a week to weight lifting and sculpting and to get to the gym I rode my bike. I actually rode my bike two days past my due date which was liberating. Per Tara’s recommendation, I also made weekly appointments during the final 6 weeks for acupuncture and chiropractic care. My acupuncturist, Sharon Levy, was extremely knowledgeable about pregnancy and induction methods and her sessions really relaxed me. Lisa Geiger was my chiropractor and she did an excellent job at aligning my body to make labor a seamless process! The whole point of all this is, I was in control of the pregnancy and the birth. Owning the birth, with Tara as the guide, was the best decision I’ve made in my life, and if we live far away from Tara for our second child, I want to fly her to me for that birth!