Home improvement arms race

The men are at it today, at their periodic competition. I doubt that they recognize it as such. I have noticed that when one of them works on a home improvement project, the other one will all of a sudden start a home improvement project, too. It's like a crazy suburban man-ritual.

The Man is putting in a new vanity in his bathroom. Yesterday, the man across the driveway from us came over to look at the new vanity as it sat on the deck awaiting installation. The Man was discussing with him how he planned to carry out this project and the struggles he was having with it. The two of them consulted for quite some time. Today the other man across the way fired up some god-awful woodworking tool that made an unholy racket audible for miles around. Now he's got a project of his own.

I sometimes wonder if whenever The Man starts a home improvement project if the other man across the way, whose house floor-plan is just like ours, starts thinking that our house is improving in some way to become better than his, and therefore he figures he ought to get to some put-off project of his own lest his house lose value somehow, along with his manliness. It is like some kind of home improvement/manly-man arms race. We have never let him come inside, as far as I know. That is because our house on the inside is truly shameful. We don't want anyone to see the disgrace that is our hovel, our sty.

So the improvement war among them escalates with every new project, but we over here already know that they over there have long ago won the contest. So in a way, it's sort of tragically funny. At least from my womanly point of view.

Flute and running

Flute
My new flute in the key of E arrived. It's very nice. It's made of PVC plumbing pipe, which should make it look cheap and silly, but actually it comes out very nice and clean. It has a nice tone and the key of E has a nice feeling to it. It is made by Doug Tipple.

My plan is, since simple system flutes (flutes with just 6 holes and no keys like silver band flutes) play only two scales easily, is to use my E flute to play tunes in the key of A. On my regular Irish flute, the key of A requires one note to be played half-hole, covering only half the hole to make a G#. I find this to be easy enough on some tunes, but really hard on others. We play a lot of Scottish and Cape Breton tunes at my session, so I sit out a lot of A tunes. My E flute will play key of E and key of A easily. It's my new cheater flute so maybe I can play along with some of those tunes. The first one I'm learning is Frank's reel.

Running
I went running a few times this week. Today I went for a run without shoes. It feels good to run barefoot. It's easier than running in shoes.

I run in a nice neighborhood in the hills above my house. The pavement is very clean up there and there aren't too many people driving by in cars to intimidate me bouncing all my blubber around.

You might think it's a lot more damaging to run without shoes, but actually it feels less impactful. Running barefoot is sort of a fad right now, or a movement, depending on your point of view. There have been lots of articles in the news and there are many web sites and blogs on the topic. One I've enjoyed is Barefoot Ted's site. He doesn't write often, but his site can lead you to others if you're interested in reading more.

My years of hiking have demonstrated to me vividly—with blisters, stress fractures and other skeletal problems—the damage that shoes can cause. My solution for hiking has been to wear my shoes 2 or even 3 sizes too big, get the widest I can find (4E is ideal) and wear them with the laces as loose as possible. I choose shoes without motion control and with as little to hinder the natural movement of my feet as possible. I've had better luck the more I've moved in this direction.

The result of all these years of walking has been to see my toes straighten out and separate. Only my littlest toes still bend a little inward. I get less blisters wearing big shoes. My ankles have always been strong like tree trunks so I've never felt a need for ankle support. In fact, the first time I went with low-top hiking shoes I was so amazed at the freedom to use the full range of motion of my legs to help me get up hills that I never went back to the restriction of high-top boots again.

Anyway, since I've become quite blubbery in the past few months of being home from the PCT, running is my new hope to get the weight off.

I'm lost

I feel lost. I am sad that another spring and summer are coming up and I'm not going to hike the PCT. There will be people out there hiking the PCT but none of them will be me. I don't have any plans at all, not for big hikes and not really for life. I feel aimless. Add to that my part-time job which leaves me with a lot of time on my hands, time I'm not using wisely. I have time and nothing to do, no goal to work toward. I practice my music for hours, I have a class that has started, but no real plan.

What happens to a person when they finally do something they've always wanted to do? What happens after that?

I am trying to keep a positive attitude and not feel down about this, but pushing these feelings down doesn't actually make them go away.