"How are you?"

People keep asking how I'm doing. "Oooh. How are you?," "How are you doing?," "Are you and the kids hanging in there?."

I think it's fairly obvious that I'm pretty damn miserable. This is literally the threshold of hell people. My misery is so extreme in fact, that I have developed permanent frown lines. This makes my RBF (resting bitch face) even less attractive than it was before. Which you would think would deter people from asking, "How are you??," but apparently not.

I took my kids to the bike shop yesterday to get my oldest fitted for a cylcocross bike. He is joining the juniors team this fall, and when he and his dad talked about it earlier this year, I'm not actually sure who was more excited between the two of them.

 I walked into the bike shop armed with my three restless children, two of my husbands closest friends (who happen to also be very knowledgeable cross riders), a new credit card, and a false sense of strength. We talked for a while about what bike would fit him best, took some measurements, and I chased my kids around the bike shop trying to make sure they weren't going to shoplift a stash of energy blocks. It was all going pretty well, until I went up to the register. The guys had taken my kids to a different area of the store, so I could check-out in peace. The guy ringing me up was trying to be nice and make small talk, and I could see where this was headed.

Easy buddy. Just do the awkward silence thing, take my credit card and nobody gets hurt.

At one point he looked at me, confused, and asked, "So, are all three of them yours?" I could tell he was perplexed by the fact that I had these three little kids with me, but then two other guys who came together but weren't "together."

"Yes, they are all mine," I answered.

Still confused he said "Ok, so....," and I couldn't leave well enough alone so I proceeded to tell him that their father was a cyclist and had been a fairly accomplished cyclocross rider and had meant to come in and take care of this himself, but was unfortunately killed in a hit and run last month. I explained that the two men who were helping me with all this were very close friends of my husband's and also very good cyclists themselves. And I did all this while sobbing, of course.

With a blank stare he said, "Oh God. I'm so sorry. We heard all about it."

Yeah, see, this is why I need to just keep my mouth shut. I'm quite certain I alienated both staff members, as well as my husband's friends and when I was done checking out the one friend looked at my tear streaked face and said, "You want to get out of here?"

Yes. Please. Get me the hell out of here. Out of this bike shop and out of this whole shitty situation. I am so pissed that he isn't the one here doing all of this. He loved his kids more than anything, and was so damn excited to have them start racing. This is so messed up.

At least I can say that it's over now, and I did it. Not very gracefully, but I did it and didn't die from the sheer agony of knowing that he would give anything to be here to have done it himself. Let's just hope not all of the future child-related tasks and milestones are like that though, because I think that may just kill me.