But then there is one bad thing that I can think of right this very minute, and I that is that I think that these relationship status updates, Facebook’s most prominent feature, can be very damaging to relationships of any sort. Let’s take it to one very possible extreme.

Let’s say you thought your twelve-year marriage has been bliss, and then you go to your husband’s profile, and under relationship status you see that he’s selected ”It’s complicated.”

This can present a whole new dynamic into the relationship.

Let’s say, you find this information shocking, because just last week, he brought you a dozen red roses, and was talking about mowing the lawn again, so you think everything’s fine. So something like this can make things just a little bit more awkward now. 

So maybe you’re uncomfortable asking him about it. Can you imagine the conversation? “Honey, I saw on your Facebook account that you thought our relationship was complicated. Would you want to talk about it?”

I suppose to save yourself from the discomfort, you could always send a your husband a message using Facebook’s handy messaging tool, or even leave a note on his Wall, if perhaps private messaging is too intimate.

Or send him a L’il Green Patch, a sort of olive branch of the new millenium, if you will. Poke him. Super Poke him! There are many things you can do to salvage the relationship.

Just in case that living in this kind of terror isn’t entirely necessary, I decided to move my relationship status back to private, having changed it the week prior, under the assumption that only people who know me in my day-to-day life should know these things.

So I patted myself on the back for removing myself from this game, and then I received notification that a friend had left a comment on my status update. S I logged back in to assess the damage. And there, at the top of my “News Feed,” I saw that Facebook announced, Katie Kelly is no longer listed as single.

Okay, wait a minute. That is taking information entirely out of context.

So I was standing in the check out line in Whole Foods, and was thumbing through a copy of one of their trendy magazines that I’m too cheap to buy, but there was an article from some hipster who wrote all about how he finally cancelled his Facebook account. It was all of a sudden. he had logged in to change some piece of information, and then, before he could stop himself, he just up and cancelled the whole thing.

I didn’t read the whole article because we had to get going, but I’m assuming he’s better off now. But I have to think that cancelling his Facebook account might actually make his life more difficult. He’s going to have to just interact with people, without clicking buttons. He’s going to have to actually work for it. I wish him luck.

These last six weeks are going to be the toughest, however, because I have entered the stage that is called Elastic Eternity, which isn’t really for an eternity, it’s only six weeks, but it is not an enjoyable sensation and it feels like an eternity.

If I were supposed to live in a liquid diet, I could see this as killing two birds with one stone, but as it is, I’m a cyclist by passion, so having my mouth rubberbanded shut like this makes downing the Clif Shot Bloks a messy proposition. Spaghetti with tomato sause is even worse.

I have five rubberbands in my mouth, four wrapped around two top and two bottom teeth, and one wrapped around one fang, and two bottom teeth. So when I open my mouth, you see about ten vertical rubber bands extended from a top tooth to bottom tooth, for all of the teeth in my mouth. Practically. I can barely open it.

I’m sure for some who know me, this might not be so bad.

Now that I have made these clarifications, I would like to confess that I have recently fallen pray to a stronger addiction than blogging, and I’m embarassed to even admit it, but it’s that I love learning languages and I can’t stop. This isn’t even healthy or normal. It’s beyond general curiosity or mastering a few phrases, and I learn more than Spanish. Spanish, ha, that was just a ruse to make you think that I was learning a commonly spoken language to fit in with the times. No, my other three, at this time, are Russian, German, and Czech.

I think that’s enough for now. If you speak any of these languages, I can fake a conversation with you in Spanish or Russian, but not the other two, not yet anyway, ale da mne čas! I think I just asked you to give me time in Czech.

Anyway, I don’t even want to talk about this anymore, but that’s what I do in my spare time when I’m not working or riding my bike. And it’s why I like riding public transit so much. All you need is an .mp3 player and a nice seat on the bus, and you, too, can be on your way to polyglotism! And if you choose your seat wisely, you can even find a conversation partner. Come to think of it, maybe I should find a reason to ride the 30 through China Town.

Even the power for the live musical acts shall be generated by solar paneling. I learned all of this the other day at my friend Jen’s housewarming party in Berkeley. She just got a job with the New Belgium Brewing Company, makers of the fine Fat Tire Amber Ale, so it was totally cool that she invited her boss Ian to the party. He gave us the whole low-down, and now I am passing it on to you.

Admission is free.

“You can’t do it,” he says. “Run around all you want. You can’t beat the system.”

But wait! Here’s what Dr. Laura says.

Feminism Kills Women: Betty Friedan’s negative view of so-called “women’s work” created a movement that turned family life upside down and wrenched women from their homes. Turns out, women’s work, is the very thing that saves women’s lives!

Hmmm…

I wish she would just get off my back. She hounds me all the time. “How’s your Miata?” she wants to know. Parked. What else can I say?

“Have you blue printed the motor yet?” “What about the shock rebuild?”

When will this nagging stop?

Still, there is something cool about having a mom who’s a racecar driver, especially when you’re waiting in front of Donlon Elementary School. All your friends are getting into the yellow school bus, but you can hear your mom heal-and-toe downshifting in her Shelby GT-350 five blocks away. Whenever I hear the roar of a 289, I feel comforted in ways I just can’t explain. Kind of like how the smell of pancakes on the griddle might make some of you think of home. I smell motor oil and I get all nostalgic.

But just so you know that I am not completely biased as far as cool mothers go, I know someone who is just going to freak you out, and my mom, especially. Mom, if you’re reading this, if you thought I was crazy for racing bikes, I want you to feast your eyes on this. This is about my friend Celia Graterol. She’s a mom, too. Only, she doesn’t race cars; she jumps over them. Read her blog entry, and make sure you click the link below to read the full report. You’re just not going to believe it!

Anyway, I’m sharing with you a link to an essay written by Jacquie Phelan. Long before I knew that people even actually raced bikes (aside from watching the Tour de France on tv), I had done some Internet “research” on mountain biking. I’d just acquired my trusty Trek 850 complete with toe clips. I was tired of feeling like crying every time I rode with my then boyfriend Gumbo Lumbrusco (that is his stage name). I never fell nor hurt myself, I want you to know. That’s because I walked my bike most of the time. This is a whole ‘nother story.

I somehow found myself looking at the Wombats.org webpage. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Women’s Mountain Bike and Tea Society. This seemed like the perfect group for me. But I never joined. After Gumbo and I broke up, I never tried mountain biking again until I rode into a tree in Sedona, Arizona, which brought me even closer to meeting Jacquie Phelan one day, but that, too, is another story.

The story is that I was supposed to be entering orders into the database, as I was a Jandel Scientific Order Hotline Operator. I was highly specialized in my craft. But no, I found myself surfing the internet reading every article ever written by Wombat founder Jacquie Phelan. Never mind that she was in her day the most successful mountain biker ever. Her writing triggered something in me. Since then, I’ve wondered, is there a connection between riding and writing? And then is this connection only in English? Escribir and andar sound so completely different, for example.

Autocross never inspired writing like this, none that I’ve read anyway, and being the daughter of the owners of autocrossing’s only literary review, you’d think I’ve have at laest some insight. It was reading Jacquie’s articles that planted some kind of seedling of an idea into the fleshy flower pot of my brain, and that idea was, Whoa. You mean there is life outside of the parking lot?

It would please Jacquie to know that she unpaved my path.

So I’m sharing a link to one of my favorite Jacquie Phelan essays, Kicking Back at Fate (you have to click the quote below to read the whole thing, and you should!). 

…I sometimes wonder if the laws of physics will be repealed when I am in the middle of a winding, slick descent. The devilish programmer in my upstairs viewing room runs a segment of ‘Flights of the Paranoid’ until I remember I’m the one with the clicker, and I switch channels to ‘Replays of Great Races’, ‘Peaceful Ponds’ or my favorite: ‘Wombats: Bulldozers of the Bush’. My elbows unlock and my neck loosens.

No matter what else is going wrong, when I’m in the saddle, one thing in my life is in balance.

You can read more of Jacquie’s essays here.