Were it not for that damn laminated poster......

I just returned home from yet another trip to Puerto Rico, my second in 2010. When T and I decided we wanted to migrate south for some Vitamin D therapy over the holiday season, we interviewed several other candidates. Grenada (do you know how much flights to Grenada cost? Think mortgage payments. That’s with an “s”, as in plural, more than one payment.), Florida (unpredictable temperatures this time of year), Mexico (meh....), to name a few.

Puerto Rico kept winning out, despite my reluctance. After all, I’d just been there this past spring, not to mention there is (apparently) a case of wine floating around somewhere down there for which I never received so much as a “Thanks, see you in hell, jerk.” However, my previous life as a business traveler has left me with scores of airline miles and hotel points that worked well with a Vieques/San Juan itinerary, and we found other suitable accommodations that kept the destination within our post-pharmaceutical-industry-heyday- double-dip-recession- hey-we-really-should-pay-our-teachers-more budget. Plus, we’re both avid* swimmers, and one of the highlights of my first trip to Vieques was all the glorious open water swimming I was able to do. Every day brought a different beach, each ideal for long swims in calm, clear, warm, mostly relatively shallow water. Perfect for a closeted open water wimp like me, who were it not for the funds already invested and the people waiting at the other end would likely chicken out of every open water race I’ve ever put myself through. And so because this was a known entity about Vieques, and because this is something we both sought as a major priority in our final destination, the deal was sealed. Tickets were booked, arrangements made. Puerto Rico or bust.

Meanwhile, and in fact long before all this vacation planning ever took place, I had kinda gotten a little hooked on this motivational program at the pool. Last January some non-swimmer gym employee had launched a “Swim 100 Miles in 100 Days” thing with the intent of luring folks into a social contract to essentially swim from Baltimore to Philadelphia in a pretty tight time frame in exchange for a t-shirt. The program was super legit with a binder that held everyone’s records and a laminated poster where you could mark your milage for all to see. Good times!

I think three, maybe four, people actually made it to Philly by Day 100. T may have been one of them. Gym Motivational Program Original Intention: Fail.

After the 100 days passed, however, many people, myself included, continued to track their milage. And as the year started to round third base, Thanksgiving coming and going, I, Khop, lover of round numbers, neat edges and right angles, realized that while I came nowhere close to 100 miles in 100 days, I just might be able to finish 2010 with 200 miles.

Oh my was the thought intoxicating. Two hundred. Such a lovely round number, so full of zeros and divisibles. How satisfying would it be to see the entire second row next to my name on the laminated poster filled with marker?

Sigh.

At this juncture I was near the 180-mile mark and thus would have to pick it up quite a bit. The only point in the year when my monthly milage was at or above twenty was whilst training for this, and I am currently in love with and putting significant time into this. But with some effort and motivation, I felt it was well within my grasp. Especially as yet again, I have found myself in December with plenty of time on my hands.

In thinking this through, counting how many days in December I would be in town and assessing how attainable this round number actually was, I came to one distinct conclusion, which was that I did not want to leave a significant portion of this milage to do during my much-awaited trip to paradise. Sure, I wanted to swim while I was there, but I didn’t want to have to swim, to feel obligated to some internal, unimportant-to-every-other-person-and-thing-on-the-planet goal. After all, the words “obligated” and “vacation” are completely irrelevant to one another, and should rarely, if ever, find themselves in the same sentence. No problem, as I am older, I am wiser, and I have found it possible, on occasion, to make a deadline without bringing it right down to the very last nanosecond.

I’ve totally got this.

Or so I thought, until over the next 24 days the angel of motivation and the devil of my TV remote waged a war, and I found myself boarding the plane to Vieques with only twelve miles swam and eight yet to go.

Weak, khop. So pitifully weak.

Well, I reasoned, I am spending four days in Vieques with Mr. Swim, himself. This is exactly what I did not want to do to myself, but two miles per day isn’t entirely out of the question. We’ll see what happens; all is not lost.

Unfortunately, over the course of those four days daylight, weather, a touch of vacation laziness and a healthy dose of the aforementioned open water wimpiness mixed up a cocktail that led to a pathetic performance. Allow me to recount:

Day One: Mosquito Pier - gorgeous two mile round trip swim full of starfish, sea turtles and easy sighting on the pier on one side, land on the other. We left it too late in the day and only had time to clock 1.5 miles. No problem, three days left.

Day Two: Blue Beach. Utter vacation laziness. Zero energy due to a bender someone had with a few locals the night before. Moderate depression upon getting tricked into reading The Worst Vacation Book, no scratch that, Generally Speaking The Worst Book Ever Written. Zero miles clocked. Uh oh.

Day Three: Horrific rainy weather. Just terrible. Investigated Mosquito Pier, surf deemed rough. Sun Bay, sand churned up, water gross. Green beach, 0.5 nervous miles clocked. Crap.

Day Four: Beautiful weather. Awoke with insane ambitions of nonstop swimming - 6 miles, no problemo! Except, problem. Sand and seaweed still churned up and unpleasant at Mosquito Pier. Underwater visibility, nil. T officially declares avid hatred for the words “Mosquito” and Pier”. It is dead to him, he mutters. Similar findings in Sun Bay. Cannot be bothered to trudge around rest of island to inspect other beaches in pursuit of now unattainable, bullshit goal. Full mental release from said goal and accompanying euphoria. Sunset swim to and from the island off the coast of Esperanza, 0.5 miles clocked.

Overall, four days in paradise, 2.5 dismal miles swam.

Meh.... whatcha gonna do?

T, also disappointed with the odometer reading, got to clicking away on the interwebs to see what possibilities, if any, existed for our time in San Juan. I don’t think either of us expected to find much, and sure enough, the surf’s too rough for anything open water. But a viable option surfaced - the world-class, internationally renowned San Juan Natatorium.

Ooh la la!

Luckily my travel companion was one who also gets pretty geeked at the thought of taking a lap or two in what the folks over at Wikipedia site as "the most advanced natatorium in the Caribbean and 4th in the entire world", and I was suddenly back in business with a chance at hitting the big two - oh - oh.

And thus, over the next two days, whilst sharing the pool with these fine gentlemen, I got several hours of my Puerto Rican vitamin D whilst ticking off the remaining 5.5 miles. 195.... 196.....197..... and finally, with roughly 13 hours left in the year.... 200!

Hit that goal with time to spare. Time to spare I tell you!

Truthfully, besides keeping count, many of those laps were spent wondering why I do these things to myself. After all, this scenario is not new. How many times have I set a goal and then neglected to steadily work on it while the stakes are low? When time is plentiful, motivation is not. Love of TV and sleep and the creation of fake Facebook accounts take much higher priority, and instead of being the Little Engine That Could, chugging steadily up the mountain, I take inspiration from my obese cat.

That is, until the deadline is eminent. Suddenly, attaining said goal has everything to do with my own self-worth, and the thought of missing the mark fills my head with terms like "washed up", "failure", "post-peek" and similar. I recall past achievements and worry that the drive and resolve that did it for me then is forever gone. No matter how insignificant the goal at hand, suddenly failure to achieve it symbolizes a permanent slide into mediocrity.

And your 30's is just too damn early to suck, you know?

Here's how this typically turns out: a herculean push, a flood of activity, a veritable fire drill - and more often then not, a goal attained. Happy ending, hit-me-in-the-face-with-a-frying-pan-ugly process.

January 2nd is a perfect time for goal-setting. I have to think that in 2011 I can do a little better. Not by taking the 200 up to 300, but by needlessly stressing fewer years of my life away. For once. Over the course of the next 365 days, I promise myself and my loved ones at least one less fire drill. Now that is daunting.

Crossing my fingers and diving in,

khop

* allow me to clarify the term “avid”. I love it, but am slow as the day is long. T loves it and is good at it.

I khop, take you, KitchenAid 610 Professional Mixer in Empire Red.....

It could work, couldn't it?

I mean, I could marry a mixer and be perfectly happy, don't you think?

Even if you think I'm spewing nothing but crazy talk, be a friend and humor me by smiling and saying yes. Yes, of course.

Ah, that's good. Thanks.

Of course, I'm kidding. Hear that, Mom? No need to sound the alarm just yet. But there is a distinct reason why every time I pass by my beautiful new KitchenAid Professional 610 Stand Mixer in Empire Red I have a fleeting mental dialogue similar to the one described above. It's because, well, I thought by the time I finally owned this beast of a machine, this masterpiece of red metal, this mixer that is the culinary equivalent of a jackhammer in terms of how much of a Martha Stewart badass I feel like when I rev this thing up, I thought, well, that I'd already be married by then.

.....aaaaaaand I'm definitely not.

Lest you feel a hint of that knot in your stomach, a slight panic of "oh no, khop, please stop. She's going to start whining about being unmarried, and I'm so embarrassed for her while reading this because doesn't she know that she's supposed to pretend she's not at all bothered by it, even though she is 32 (yikes), and I can't believe she's about to whine about being unmarried all over the internet, yes she has a mixer, but she has completely lost every shred of her dignity, not to mention her mind," have no fear. I'm going to do no such thing.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, btw.

I will tell you why I have these fleeting thoughts, though, as I think it's kind of cool and empowering, and I wonder if any of my five(? up from 3?) readers have ever experienced something similar.

I come from a family of three daughters of which I am the youngest. My parents, two very fair, equitable and practical individuals, believed that a little assembly line-style parenting went a long way in terms of minimizing disputes and accusations of preferential treatment of one daughter over another. This "if X was given to Daughter #1 at Y time, then X, or comparable good/service/privilege should also be given to Daughters 2 and 3 at times relative to Y, lest mutiny and chaos erupt," approach gave rise, mostly by accident, to a household of milestones. It was cool for me, the youngest, to have these traditions because I knew more or less what to expect. I would be allowed to get my driver’s license exactly one month after turning sixteen. How much my parents were willing to fork over for college tuition was known well in advance of the applications going in. For my twenty-first birthday, I would be getting a cedar hope chest. College graduation, a car, etc.

And then, there were the knives. In addition to the modest but lovely weddings my parents threw for my two older sisters, each couple was presented with a beautiful set of Cutco knives as a wedding present. My God, were those knives gorgeous, each of them housed in its own specific slot in the cedar storage block that sat proudly on the kitchen counter. For goodness sake, I’ve seen the Cutco demonstration; you can cut an old leather boot with one of those things! Like any hopeful girl does, I dreamed of the day I would walk down the isle towards my beloved… and my very own set of Cutco knives. Ahhh, all the things I would chop.

A few years ago, I experienced a rather dramatic change in life direction, as I went from being unhappily coupled and on the brink of starting an unhappy marriage to being single. Despite this change being primarily positive, I went through an extensive mourning period, adjusting and plotting a new course for my life. One piece I took rather hard was the perceived loss of my knives. They had seemed so close, just around the corner, and now, gone. It looked as though I’d be using my Target-brand knives for the foreseeable future. Oh, the horror.

A few months later, as my birthday approached, my mother and I had a rather scandalous idea. What if, instead of waiting for a groom to show up, I got my knives now, as a birthday present? Sure, it’s breaking with tradition, but if you’re the last one in the line, does tradition really matter that much? There was a small part of me that felt like I was selling out, and that by getting the knives early I was ever so slightly entertaining the notion that someday my prince would, in fact, not come.

But then I realized that one thing has nothing to do with the other. So, I got over it and decided to do me some choppin’….

Even more of a rebel, I requested that we switch it up even further. Instead of an entire set of Cutcos, I downgraded in numbers and upgraded in brand, welcoming two gorgeous Shun Ken Onions (the 5” paring and the granddaddy 8” chef) and one sturdy Wusthof 9” serrated bread knife into my kitchen.

Oh the glorious chopping frenzy. The fact that within five minutes of having the chef’s knife out of the box my mother and I had managed to knick the kitchen table and slice one finger is really neither here nor there.

And so, what does the mixer have to do with this? There is no mixer-related family tradition, although the idea of it certainly has its roots in them. Simply put, although I have wanted one forever, I have put off the mixer acquisition for years, because of this firm notion in my head that it was something I would register for. The mixer had become more than a mixer for me; it had become a symbol, a rite of passage. The groom was still nameless and faceless, but damnit if I didn’t see a mixer now waiting for me at the alter where the knives once stood.

Until this year, when as my birthday once again approached, I looked about at the landscape of my life and decided that about the only thing missing in it was my mixer. Beautiful new house, rewarding job, phenomenal friends and family and a big empty space on my countertop that only a mixer could fill. So I called my mom and said, “The thing is, mom, I make a lot of gluten free bread…” The rest is history.

There’s an adjustment, I think, one goes through when you pass into your 30’s still single. Meeting your mate early means transitioning to a different level of adulthood with a partner as opposed to on your own, and there are many things that unconsciously feel unnatural if done before that partner shows up. Like we’re doing them out of order or something. A first home purchase and getting organized about retirement are two big examples. A mixer and some knives are seemingly smaller but symbolically large ones for me.

A little bit of waiting is OK, I suppose. After all, as satisfying and empowering as it is to take the horse by the reigns and charge past each of these milestones by myself, refusing to put life on hold, it is bittersweet. Partially because of the nagging concern that he’ll never show up. But also because each one represents another first my future “him” and I won’t have, because I’ll already have had it. There comes a point, however, where waiting any longer becomes silly, and treading water turns into sinking. I know a guy my age currently living in his father’s basement. Several times home ownership has come up in conversation, and his comment always is, “I’ve never really thought about buying a house before, because I’d always assumed I’d have the wife first, then the house.”

My advice to him? You’re 33. Buy the house.

Bakin’ the bread, and slicin’ it up,

khop