Of Itchy Fingers and Ridiculous Bikes

This week's Tungsten Hippo post is about how sometimes my fingers itch to play some music- and how one of the ebooks I read triggered that feeling.

It is true that I sometimes feel a longing to play music that feels like the finger version of the restlessness that we call itchy feet, which is why I call the feeling "itchy fingers." If I am near my violin or viola when the feeling strikes, I sometimes get them out to play. Sometimes I just let the feeling pass. I can't always do everything I like to do, and this particular period of my life is a bit light on musical expression. I am thinking about whether it is time to change that, but the thing about music is that for me to really enjoy playing it, I have to have enough time to practice. Music is only fun if I play at a minimally acceptable level, and that is not something I can just dip into every now and then.

This means that I've had to find other outlets for my creativity during this phase of life, when my kids need so much from me. They are getting older, and soon they will need different things- more challenging perhaps, but less sensitive to Mommy heading out every Tuesday night to play fiddle at a bar. So perhaps soon, I'll pick up my fiddle again.

In the meantime, there are many other great things in my life, some of which would not be there if I had not had children. On the whole, I feel like I've made a good trade.

Today, we decided to take advantage of the unusually warm weather we've been having and cross "ride a surrey bike again" off our 2014 Family Fun List. Riding a surrey bike is one of those really fun things that I don't think I would ever have tried without children to blame for the ridiculousness of the activity.

We like to ride our ridiculous bikes in Coronado. As we walked along the beach to the bike rental place, we saw someone building an impressive sand castle. We headed over to check it out.

Those are little princess figurines on the castle. He has one of every Disney princess. The man is a shrewd businessman- the princesses so delighted my kids that we would have felt surly not dropping a few bucks in his tip bucket. 

Once we got to the bike rental place, Mr. Snarky fast talked the kids into a deuce coupe instead of the surrey. I prefer the surreys for pure "this is ridiculous" factor, but I have to agree with Mr. Snarky that the deuce coupes have better maneuverability. 

We set out in our deuce coupe with the kids strapped in the back. Petunia had insisted on bringing a stuffed puppy in a zebra print purse (a birthday gift that has proven surprisingly popular- her friend chose well). Pumpkin almost brought a cat in a carrier, but decided on a Dora doll at the last minute. Perhaps because of the Dora doll, the kids spent the entire return ride pretending to be on an adventure, looking for the landmarks on the map that they had inspected when we stopped for a rest at a park.

After we returned the bike, we walked back to our car and drove to the other side of Coronado for lunch at the Coronado Brewing Company, home of my go-to local beer (Mermaid Red) and a brewmaster's pretzel that the kids love. I tried the Bock Ness Monster today (quite nice). Mr. Snarky called in a favor to get me to drive home and got a tasting flight. We both rather liked the Bobblehead Red IPA he had in his flight.

All in all, it was a fun day out, made even more fun by the fact that I am taking tomorrow off. Petunia is going to day care and Pumpkin is going to a gymnastics camp that runs from 9-3, so I'll get quite a bit of time to myself, which I really need. Maybe I'll finally get collections added to Tungsten Hippo. We'll see. I might also decide to just spend the entire day reading.