My wife.....the Renaissance woman

We have completed our tenth day in a row cycling 50K (i.e., 32 miles) in Leisure World in the very cold dark.  We ride on streets and on trails on the two golf courses.  The trails, especially, require a lot of skill to maneuver--sharp turns, curbs in places, lots of bumps, water hazards (!), etc.

Then, we get home, and instead of crashing, my wife makes two pecan pies----from scratch, taking about three hours to complete.

 

 

 

Now, if you are looking closely, you might notice that she is loading the pie plates with what look to be pinto beans. You are not crazy.--those really are pinto beans.  She does that to hold the pie crust in shape while it's in the oven.  I mean, everybody knows that, right?

 

 

 

Now she is making the pecan mixture.  

And pouring the pecans (about 50% more than the recipe calls for) into the mixture:

Ready to bake!

Done!  Don't they look good?  I have to wait until Thanksgiving to have one.....piece I mean (actually I could eat one pie!).

Still need evidence she's my Renaissance woman?  Besides being an awesome cook, who makes everything from scratch, she can knit and sew with the best of them, she has done 62 sky dives (not while married to me---I would have thrown myself into the propeller to stop her), she was on ski patrol and worked as a lifeguard, she is an excellent dressage horsewoman, she was Seattle's first female cop, she worked in Corrections, she started a Marshal's service, she worked for years with abused women helping them through the legal system and protecting them (and for years afterwards would have women come up to her to thank her), and she worked for years counseling adolescents to keep them out of the corrections system.

She can cycle like a 40-year-old, hikes regularly, plays a mean game of ping pong,

and is an awesome ballroom dancer.

Through all of this, the priority for her, the most important thing in her, is that she is a fantastic mother, she is a wonderful grandmother to 13 grandchildren, 

and

she's my wife.  

And I don't have to share her with anybody.   Don't ask! 

Probably there's more to her, but my fingers are getting tired of typing all of the variety of things she has accomplished in her life and can do well.

I need to sit down and rest and have a piece of, well let me see, maybe pecan pie?  Honey??