Lacrosse and Weekend Recap

Henry and I left Friday afternoon for Palm Springs where he played about seven thousand games of lacrosse while I watched.

Here are a couple of good action shots. Henry is the one on the far left at the edge of the photo, number 15.

Here's another one:

Here's me, watching the field. I have a really shitty sports-mom chair that is sort of broken, and because it was Palm Springs, and the sun was shining mercilessly at times, I rigged my sweater as a sun shield and hid out.

Normally, I wouldn't post such an alarmingly close photo of myself, but I sort of like the weirdness of the colors -- my upper lip has entirely disappeared into what appears to be lily-white skin (that I've never had), there's an enormous line running down the center of my forehead (that I've had for a short time, but it appears to have lengthened and deepened), and some horrifying crepey substance below my neck which I swear to you is NOT my skin. All moles (beauty marks) and errant eyebrow hairs are original. Posting this here is a rather vain attempt to purge myself of vanity. Humor me.

I also got to do my favorite thing which is to sleep in a hotel bed made up with white linens. I threw myself down onto this bed on both nights we stayed in the hotel, eventually making my way under the duvet with my little chapter of War and Peace (yes, I'm still going strong with a chapter a day, are you?) and then a few pages of Magda Szabo's The Door (my Books & Bakes selection for January) before literally crashing around 9:15. Henry, I believe, watched television from his own bed and claimed that I snored. Good thing he's so handsome. Here he is taping his lacrosse stick.

Here's a photo that I took at sunrise from the balcony of our hotel room, where I most certainly did not snore:

In all seriousness, being the parent to a teenaged boy is really the best, especially when your son is nearly always charming and patient, drives well on southern California freeways and never complains. All of the superlatives more than make up for having to charade as a sports mom which means yelling out every now and then in excitement, wincing when said teenager goes sprawling into the ground, tolerating the Screaming Dads and every now and then throwing in a comment or observation about the game which appears out of my mouth like a sort of cartoon bubble. Since I barely know any of the other parents on the team (there are actually some really great ones this time around), I imagine they think I know what I'm talking about, but I can assure you, Reader, I absolutely do not know what I'm talking about when I talk about lacrosse.

What happened up there is that Henry came running toward me -- I mean, the player with the ball -- and I was able to take that amazing action shot. Two seconds later, he lay sprawled on the ground, and good lacrosse mom that I am, I barely winced and certainly didn't gasp and might have even yelled at the ref, but I can't remember.

Did I say anything about living in southern California and how fantastic it is? This venue was just a two hour drive from us -- desert and blue skies and snow-capped mountains ringing the fields. Whoa. Right?

And Peace*

First of all, as I fried an egg and toasted some bread this morning I wondered just how I do it. That's all. It wasn't self-congratulatory. I was just observing in a sort of mindful way how I absorb, think about, deflect and let fly the various emotions that accompany my daily life with Sophie. It's been a difficult morning. Yesterday, I took her to the beloved osteopath who worked on her for nearly an hour. Sophie was quite calm and even fell asleep for most of the visit, but as we walked down the hallway to go back to our car, she gazed off to the right and then collapsed into my arms in a seizure. I lowered her to the floor and knelt beside her as she jerked, cradling her head in my lap. When it was over, I sat down on my butt and just gazed back down the hallway, looking right out of the window at the far end. It was a long, light gaze. In the foreground were the tops of Sophie's pink high-tops, pointing upward, then a line of  pale carpeting and closed doors, symmetry, four-paned window, light, clouds.

We're working on adjusting the dosage of Sophie's cannabis and trying to tinker enough to get some better seizure control. I am actually pretty confident that we'll be able to do it, so when I say that I don't know how I do it, I mean balancing, the tightrope walk, the delicate stepping despite my bulk. Literal and figurative. Clumsy on the ground, the narrowing perspective, exploding out to light.

















*For those of you reading War and Peace with me, a chapter a day, please see my friend Criticlasm's fine blog about his own experience doing so (he inspired me to take it on). He wrote a blog years ago about his experience that serves as an excellent compendium. He's also a playwrite and wonderful critic of all things cultural, and you can find a lot of good writing at his other blog. Thank you, B!

War And

I've set myself the goal of reading a chapter a day of Tolstoy's War and Peace, and given that there are 365 chapters in the novel and 365 days in a year, I should hopefully have finally finished the tome on December 31st. I attempted to finish it before my 50th birthday, two years ago, but as the summer progressed, I got mired in the battle scenes and just couldn't do it. I figure I can read a battle scene if it's just a chapter's worth, and the other stuff -- the drama, the characters, the intrigue and romance and cold Russian sexism -- is pretty darn riveting. So watch that little mermaid tail bookmark sink, and if anyone wants to join me, the first seven chapters are short and interesting, so you can catch up by tomorrow.

Anyone?

Anyone?

Reading at The Hotel California

So, summer is in full swing around here, and we're in pajamas until noon and also feeling guilty that we're not at the beach or outside or something. I'm going to have to call the kabosh on reading War and Peace. I just can't. I thought about hauling it to Canada next week, but my hardback copy of Colum McCann's new novel Transatlantic is far more seductive. The thing is, I'm having a very hard time even reading the Russian names in War and Peace, and even harder the vast passages of military -- well -- stuff. I am skimming those vast passages, much as I did the ones about the physiology of the whale in Moby Dick, and I keep waiting for the good stuff to happen, for romance to flourish or for some Russian pathos to evolve. Quitting it nearly two months before my fiftieth birthday gives me time to maybe pick it up again, doesn't it? I am a fickle lover, I suppose, and like I said Colum McCann is crooking his seductive Irish finger at me, as well as Edna O'Brien. I might just want to take the cigarette out of her pretty mouth and take a drag on it myself. I think an Irish menage a trois is far preferable to flying a Russian solo, don't you?

Reader, what are you reading?

The Baseball Season That Never Ends

So, The Big O played on the Yankees this spring, and the team literally lost every single game -- and there were approximately 1,236,795 of them that I personally attended -- until about two weeks ago, when they beat the best team. Then this past Monday, they played in the quarter-finals of the championship (everyone plays in the championship tournament at least once) and won that game which led them to the semi-finals, last evening, where they (the last seeded team) played the top seed (is seed the right word? I don't know what I'm talking about) and won it again. So, the Yankees are headed to one more game, the Final Championship game, this Saturday.

While I did my fair share of screaming last night, it wasn't really Oliver's night. He let a couple of balls go by as second baseman and had a couple of strike-outs and one ball hit, but played out at first base -- oh my god, do you hear me talking? This language that I'm using? 

The man in the photo above, my other son, Henry, finished his baseball season some weeks ago but has conveniently made the freshman team at his new high school and will be starting practice this Saturday as well, which basically gives me the opportunity to forego any down time and just keep right on screaming and making pithy remarks about line drives, ground-outs and balks. Before you know it, I'll be replaying that video of the Dodgers' brawl that happened a couple of nights ago right here on the blog, the fight that Henry kept sticking under my nose on his iPhone, insisting that it was incredibly wild and so cool.

Like I said, I don't know what I'm talking about, but I do believe Oliver's Yankees are going to come back and perhaps win the Championship in Game Number 1,236,796 on Saturday. You know I'll be there, sitting in my plum-colored nylon chair with the black net cup-holder, booing the ump when he makes bad calls and otherwise acting like the baseball fiend that has evidently been at my core all these years, hiding behind glasses and a copy of War and Peace.

Disability and Surfing

There's been a lot written lately in the disability world about "disability porn," -- the kind of stuff that those who are not so acquainted with disability are inspired by but those in the disability world often find denigrating at worst and condescending at best -- sentimental and perpetuating the separation between those who have and those who have not.  I was clicking through my blog-roll this afternoon, though, and loved this video posted on The Improvised Life. I didn't find it "inspirational" in the least, but, rather, yearned to be velcro'ed myself onto someone's back so that I could finally, finally go surfing. And don't you be going why don't you just go out to the Pacific at your back door with a board and do it? I'm busy right now, reading War and Peace, you know?

Shaking things up

Remember my intention to read War and Peace by my fiftieth birthday in late August? I'm working on it. It's sitting on my bed right now, and I've fallen behind. At the rate I'm reading it, I might have to shoot for my sixtieth birthday in late August of 2023. As you might recall, I took up the tome in lieu of losing fifty pounds by my fiftieth birthday, and I'm now considering getting back on that bandwagon through Prancercise.



Reader, what do you think? Who wants to join me in donning white stretch pants and a tiny jacket?

Best and Worst (with an update, inspired by Michelle)

Best:   The movie I saw today, Love is All There Is. Perfection. Pierce Brosnan. Everything about it.

Worst:   The troll/Anonymous commenter on my last post. You'll know who when you click back there and read it. I actually think it's more funny than anything else and wonder about its authenticity.

Best: All of ya'll.

Worst: Hearing that the job I want isn't available until August.

Best: Still reading War and Peace and really loving it.

Worst: Enervating arguments on other people's blogs.

Best: Encouraging words to find an agent, finish my book.

Worst: Finding an agent and finishing my book.

Best: This (relating to aforementioned troll):



Worst: That Jimi Hendrix is dead and there are no recordings of this song that I could find.

The Plague, David Sedaris, Laughing and All That Is

So, the answer to Sophie's drinking strike last week and horrendous number of seizures, including the hideous gelastic ones, is probably a virus. I've been feeling puny and peaked the last few days and am most decidedly not well today. I've got cotton or something in my head and tears pricking at the backs of my eyes -- not the ones of sorrow -- and while I am able to be up and around and doing the daily shit I have to do, I'm ailing. The Brothers went to school, but both are feeling less than perfect, and who knows if The Husband will come down with it as well. It seems like this year has been a bad one for the stealth viruses for our family. I personally haven't felt great since I came back sick from a business trip I took to Washington, D.C. in early January. I think I'm going to blame it on the government.

Last night, I went to hear David Sedaris at UCLA, an annual treat, and as usual he did not disappoint. He read from his new book, told raucous stories, read from his diary and regaled us with the most vulgar jokes you could ever imagine. That man is funny, but he's also incredibly sweet, and I told my friend this morning that I just know he'd love us if he met us. The show was sold out, and the entire auditorium rocked with laughter which, to me, is about the best thing one can do if your heart is aching and you're tired of it all.

The other thing you can do is read a good book, and while I'm making my way through War and Peace, I'm also reading James Salter's novel All That Is. What a book -- the kind of perfect old-fashioned, carefully crafted writing that one rarely reads anymore -- not pretentious and overdone but real Writing. It's not a cheerful book, by any means, and the ambiance is similar to the stifling decadence and glamour of the show Mad Men. I just can't put it down. Here are two lines that stood out the other day enough for me to text them to a friend:

It seemed his manhood had suddenly caught up with him, as if it had been waiting somewhere in the wings.

And:

She looked as if difficulty of any kind was a remote thing.

I can relate to that last one. It's an awesome line, no?

Reader, what are you reading?

FGS

So, Sophie has started drinking a bit better, but now she's having laughing seizures. They're called gelastic seizures, and  hence a clue to the title of this blog post. Sophie goes through weird periods where she has them off and on for days, so I'm thinking that the refusal -- or inability -- to drink is also neurological. It would be nice if when she broke out into a huge smile and then a cackling laugh, our hearts would be lightened. But, there's something faintly gruesome about the laugh and the smile -- Wikipedia likens the sudden laugh or smile to being sardonic rather than joyful -- so my smile is perhaps strained, and the boys generally look away.

Here's a second clue to the title: I'm sick to death of seizures and thinking about what to do about them. First person to guess what the title stands for gets my copy of War and Peace when I'm finished reading it. Don't knock yourself over.

Moon Face

The Brothers are playing a game called "Plaguing" on their devices where their objective is to keep a disease from taking over the planet. I guess I should confiscate their devices and make them read or play Parcheesi, but I'm feeling grateful that there aren't any sounds of violence coming from their room or bickering. If they can be united in their virtual quest to eradicate the plague from the world on a tiny screen, AMEN.

Sophie drank a bit yesterday, under the patient coaxing of Saint Mirtha, so I'm not going to worry about that today. Last night, I lay on her bed and read through page 75 of War and Peace. Sophie was so bored that she fell asleep.

I took the picture at the top of this post last night, as I lay on my bed with Oliver. He tends toward the existential hysteria right before bed, and while there are times when I'm able to talk it out of him, there are other times where I'm hard put to be patient and basically tell him, emphatically, to Be Quiet and Call it a Day! Last night, just after I told him that, he started to laugh and we took the photo and decided that I have a moon face. AMEN.

Henry just showed me that he had eradicated the earth's population and had thus achieved victory on his device. I evidently misunderstood the objective of the game. Clearly, I need to confiscate the devices and force my sons to read or play Parcheesi. AMEN.

A Saturday Morning List

1. The ladder outside my bedroom window and the boot right there at the top, where A Man is busy trimming the hedge between my house and The Neighbor's, prompted me to wish that it were Daniel Day Lewis' boot, the Daniel Day Lewis who played the main character in the movie version of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I believe his name was Tomas pronounced Tomash and he was washing a window on an apartment building, and he caught sight of the woman inside, and before you knew it he had climbed inside and then he had seduced the woman.
2. Anyhoo.
3. On the advice of a friend (one of my many drug mules who help me to ferry Sophie's meds from Canada), I have finally bought a copy of War and Peace and have decided to complete it by my fiftieth birthday in late August. So far, so good. I'm on page 14. 1021 pages to go. This is in lieu of losing fifty pounds by my fiftieth.
4. Anyhoo.
5. The Husband has a miraculous Saturday off, so we've already divvied up the baseball game duties. I'm signed up for the noon game with Oliver.
6. Sophie is on her third or fourth day of a liquid strike. We don't know what's wrong with her, and it's difficult to shake water and juice into her resisting mouth. We took her to the doctor and nothing, apparently, is wrong. She has no infection in her ears, throat or mouth, that the doctor could see. She has no fever. She has, evidently, a $220 virus. I've gone through the stifled panic that I usually go through when Sophie isn't feeling well or acting "normal," where I imagine that it's the beginning of the end for her. I woke up this morning, though, feeling not so great myself, so I'm excited that perhaps it is indeed a virus and not that some new neurological complication has begun and the next thing you know we'll be having to have a permanent IV line or feeding tube and the seizures won't stop, etc. And you thought I was so calm, so amazing, right?
7. Anywho.
8. I spent four out of five weekdays off-kilter due to potentially stressful activities -- the removal of my stitches, the SSI meeting, a job interview and the conservatorship meeting -- and each one went as well as it could go. I believe that calls for an open thanks to the universe and all those who made it happen. I am grateful.
9. Now, if only Daniel Day Lewis would climb through my window, everything would be perfect.