Feed Me Peeled Grapes

Sophie cried the other day when we had all the snow and she found out her soccer game was cancelled again. Literally, tears and everything. “I haven’t played in almost two weeks!” she sobbed.

I sat on her bed, with my bum leg bent as much as it would go (which isn’t much) and fixed her with the devil stare I have perfected in the ten years since I became a parent. How I managed to hold in what I was thinking (something along the lines of ‘Are you joking?! Shut the f-- up! ‘), I have no idea; as it was, I believe I said “Soph, babe—enough. No crying. How do you think I feel?”

Although she stopped crying and hugged me, it was not my proudest parenting moment. She is allowed to have her own suffering and I don’t get to one-up her suffering with mine (which, by the way, is clearly worse.) And I totally get where she was coming from. All I wanted to do was sob along with her, and then possibly knock the stuff clear off her dresser for dramatic effect, and then look up at the sky and scream “Why?” like in the bridge of the Cee Lo song with the unprintable title. Then perhaps, minions would come out of nowhere, with deep, deep sympathy in their eyes, and rub my feet gently, brush my hair, and feed me peeled grapes, all the while murmuring in hushed tones about how much I was suffering since I haven't played soccer in six months.

But nothing happened.

Instead, I hugged Sophie back and limped downstairs and watched Glee. It was not almost as good as playing soccer. Nothing is.

Point/Counterpoint: When Are You Going to Finish Writing Your Damn Guest Blog vs. When I'm Good and Ready

The Onion news often has articles called Point/Counterpoint which delve into two sides of an issue. I thought it would be fun to write one of these about soccer coaching with someone, so back on Sept 27 I asked my ex-boyfriend Jim to guest blog about it for me, since he has been coaching his sons for many years and I am a newbie coach for my daughter. It didn’t turn out exactly the way I planned, but here are the results.

POINT
When Are You Going to Finish Writing Your Damn Guest Blog

By Cathy Collis, victim of recent ACL Reconstruction knee surgery

So sometimes, people ask other people to do things, and they, like, just don’t do them. I’m not talking about any one particular incident or anything, just putting the idea out there. Like let’s imagine for a second that someone has recently had knee surgery, and they’re battling through doing even the basic necessities of life, like showering and stuff, and then someone else with perfectly good knees and all the time in the world to go for bike rides breezily agrees to guest write something for the first person's blog—can you imagine the relief that provides for the original person, knowing they don’t have to write their own blog for a week? Considering they are on some seriously addictive painkillers and are not supposed to operate heavy machinery? But wait! Then he doesn’t do that thing. Months go by. He uses lame excuses, like work, and his kids having the chicken pox, and coaching soccer.

Clearly the original person should have known better than to ask the kind of person who would make plans to take his girlfriend to Olive Garden, and then later bail on those plans by saying he felt sick—only for the girlfriend to find out later that he was fine and at the pub with his buddies for a guys night thing. Even if that thing was 18 years ago.

Just saying. Hypothetically.

PS. Does anyone want to buy some leftover painkillers?

COUNTERPOINT
When I’m Good and Ready

By Jim Martell, ex-boyfriend

First of all, I am a beautiful, flawed middle-aged man with a host of emotional disabilities and only the most tenuous grasp on my sanity, but I am fairly sure that when my doctor tells me I am not supposed to operate heavy machinery he is not referring to a computer keyboard. In any case, I am easily overwhelmed when I have multiple tasks concurrently on my “to do” list. I become paralyzed, curl into a metaphorical ball and proceed with none of the work, regardless of impending deadlines and negative consequences. The one thing I always show up for is my soccer coaching duties: coaching kids is interactive, physical, and (at this level) uncomplicated. Frustratingly, my younger son’s routine on game days is as follows:

Pre-game: “Do I HAVE to go to soccer todaaaay?”

Half-time: “Is it almost OVER? I’m sooooo tired!”

Post-game: “I’m glad THAT’s over for another week!”

Why is his immediate reaction always avoidance? He’s not the best player on the team, but certainly not the worst. It fills me with dread at times that he would rather “not do” than “do.” I worry that this lack of engagement will spill over into all aspects of his life, that he will never develop a healthy enthusiasm for anything, and that I am failing as a parent by not instilling in him a sense of urgency to get going on something. Anything.

My suspicion is that he is probably feeling just like his dad: overwhelmed. But he doesn’t have a family to feed, a house and yard to maintain, bills to pay, teams to coach...or a guest blog to write. On the other hand, he does have school to attend, homework to do, extracurricular lessons, chores, personal relationships to maintain with his family and friends. Maybe on Saturday mornings, he just wants to be left alone to have a rest. I know how he feels.

I can never get everything done, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to get anything done. I feel like everywhere I look, I see someone whom I am letting down: wife, kids, boss, friends...I just cannot seem to spring into action. But at least now I have obliged my ex-girlfriend by spending fifteen minutes on this. That’s got to count for something, even if it probably doesn’t make up for the Olive Garden thing.

Sure wish I had some prescription painkillers.

Lentil Salads be Damned!

Walking by a newsstand the other day I saw a magazine called Fit over 40, and since I reached that milestone relatively recently, I decided to have a look at it. It’s filled with earnest looking women in their lululemon gear, grinning idiotically as they do various yoga poses or grip tiny stainless steel weights. (So this is my demographic. I hope they don’t miss me.)

I flipped right through to the end of the magazine, so I know there was no page in it with a gasping woman bent over, leaning on her knees in the driving rain, while wearing an ill-fitting yellow pinney, as I would have been at soccer six months ago. I should point out that in this particular memory I was also smiling idiotically, laughing really, but it’s because I had just run down the wing and done a splendid cross to Ron, who headed it into the net, and since it was his first goal since he had started playing with us, he was so excited that he was jumping and whooping it up like a kid.

The Fit over 40 healthy lentil salad recipes also don’t compare to the two pints I sometimes used to knock back after soccer either.

So…the only thing that's comparable between 40 year old me and the 40 year old women in the magazine is the smiling.

But now really, who was having more fun?

Alternate Tweets for Cristiano Ronaldo

So, I just joined twitter and decided to follow, amongst other famous people, Cristiano Ronaldo. In case you didn’t know, he’s rather attractive, the world’s highest paid soccer player-- he has over a million followers-- and is the most boring tweeter in the world.

I’ve only been on there for a few weeks, but all I’ve seen him post is plain-old boring blah stuff (“going to bed before a big game”), self-promotional fluff (“buy these new cleats I designed” or “check out my new Armani ad”) or scores (“Real Madrid 2, AC Milan 2” ) Yawn. Granted, he is amazing at soccer, but he can’t be amazing at everything-- so now I like to imagine him as some kind of cro-magnon caveman in front of the computer monitor, his pretty face contorted into a buck-toothed guffaw while he picks up his keyboard and his mouse and slowly bangs them together while trying to tweet. (This image I have was solidified when I read about that fact that his son was the result of a one night stand he had with a waitress in New York, whom witnesses say he seduced by walking up to her directly and saying only one delightfully romantic line: “Me, you, f-ck, f-ck”. That’s a direct quote. I’m serious. Look it up.)

In any case, shouldn’t he spice up the tweets? Doesn’t he have some obligation to entertain those millions of followers? He could at least expand them by using the full 140 character limit. He’s got to tweak those tweets. To that end, I’ve written some suggested alterations for him to try out.

Instead of :

“Check out my new cleats...”

I like:

“Buy my new Ronaldo cleats. You won’t play better, but if you do buy them, I’ll be able to buy that 4th Ferrari I’ve really been needing.”

Instead of :

“Heading to bed before the big game”

I like:

“Spent the day counting the $ I’ve made, but couldn’t finish--so I pushed some piles of eruos together to make a pillow and fell asleep.”

And of course, instead of:

“Real Madrid 2, AC Milan 2”

I like:

“I use only four words to say the score, and I use only four words to score with a woman. Impressive, no?”

I’m still working on one for the Armani ad. Here it is. I was thinking something along the lines of:

"Check out my new Armani ad. Maybe you can tell me why I'm doing crunches while standing up."

Thoughts?

Dia-Blog

This is a 3 minute movie I made from the transcript of an actual conversation I had with my husband Steve about sports. The program strips all the nuances and sarcasm from my delivery so I come across as a stone cold biatch, but I think it's okay because I got to make myself look like Keira Knightley. Also, I got to force Steve to wear a tie which he would never do in real life.

Beckham on Ellen

I like Beckham and Ellen even more now....please watch.

You're So Vein

I am in the patient area of the hospital, waiting for my knee surgery. I am wearing two thin blue bathrobes, one forwards and one backwards, with papery blue shower caps on my feet-- and nothing else. At least 7 other people in here are already dressed this way, and we are reading free metro newspapers while the TV is playing, inexplicably, 100 Huntley Street. I definitely feel a little vulnerable dressed like this, with nothing to hold up my naughty bits--to strap me in, as it were-- but I suppose the gowns aren’t exactly form fitting, and most of us in this room are in the same predicament. I find myself bending my knee a lot while I sit there, because I can. I know soon I won’t be able to. I am a long way from the soccer field now.

After I get settled into my hospital bed, a young anaesthetist comes over to set up my IV. I explain to him that last time I had an operation, they didn’t have the easiest time with this part. We look at my hands and arms and he agrees – I don’t have a lot of visible veins. I can tell he’s a student, since he’s so thorough – he listens to my heart, and my breathing, and then he asks me to open my mouth to see how wide it can open. (Is it just me, or does that last request seem a bit dodgy?)

As he messes around with his needles and tubes and things, he smiles and holds my hand and asks, looking into my eyes, “If you weren’t here, what would you be doing today?”

I am a busy married woman of a certain age. No one ever holds my hand and gazes at me, asking me questions like this. We start chatting a lot about the Sutton Place Hotel, where I used to work – and to someone else, it would probably appear that he and I are having a ‘moment’. He’s holding my hand and rubbing my wrist, and saying how he recently went to the chocoholic buffet there at the hotel. More gentle wrist rubbing. Why does it feel like we should be sitting across from each other at a romantic candlelit restaurant? I’m wishing I had my wedding ring back on.....and then wham – suddenly there’s a big needle in my wrist, and beside the needle, a tube is being inserted. What was all that talk about chocolate? Dang, he was totally playing me. I can hear him now, telling the other students -- dude-- the older women - talk to them about chocolate, you should see the dreamy look they get in their eyes. Then you’re free and clear to jab them. He walks away and makes notes on my chart and walks past without smiling. I guess our little moment is over.

His boss comes over a few minutes later to check on my IV and says it is fine. He also asks me to open my mouth as wide as I can. What’s with these guys? He explains, unprompted, that they need to know how wide I can open my mouth because they’re going to be putting an anaesthesia tube down my throat. Oh. The boss also asks, less suggestively, if I have any loose teeth.

“Uh, no.” Apparently they don’t want to knock any of those out with the anaesthesia tube either. Wait. Just how hard are they jamming the tube down there?

He tells me I look nervous. I want to tell him that it could be because they are going to put me under and then attack me with a tooth-busting tube, but instead I say “I’m about to have knee surgery, you know.” I say it behind my hand, confidentially, and he plays along with “Oh, you don’t say?” and we all have a laugh. It isn’t funny at all, of course. I guess I am nervous.

Eventually as my bed is wheeled into the operating room, a nurse introduces himself as Brett. He comes out and grabs my hand—and I decide I am not falling for anything this time, I am watching this one-- but I don’t see him holding any sharp objects to poke me with. Brett speaks in the exact same accent as the character Chase on House. It makes me glad he is the hand-holding nurse. The room is impossibly bright, way, way too bright – and there are at least 8 people in there.

I ask Brett, “Are all of you going to be working on me?”

“Of course! And there’s a student watching. ” The student waves, but I can’t wave back. My anaesthetist chocoholic buffet guy and his boss are there, and they are now holding my other hand and worrying about my IV input spot.

The next thing I know I am waking up shuddering and shaking like a junkie in the recovery room and my knee really hurts, and my operation is finished. How did that all happen so fast? Apparently the operation took 2 hours, but it felt like less than a minute. Anaesthesia is crazy powerful.

Once I finish my anaesthesia comedown, I start to take stock of things. First thing: oh good, they did the correct leg. Whew! Second thing: my IV spot is no longer where it used to be, but instead, there is the beginning of an enormous Oreo cookie-sized black bruise beginning to form there. I check the other arm – there is dark bruising and a hole on the back of my hand there too – but still, no bandage – and finally in the crook of my other arm, I see it – the remnants of a third IV spot, the one they actually used. They had to move it twice during surgery.

Damn chocoholic buffet guy. Shouldn’t he have been studying instead of skipping class and visiting expensive hotel dessert bars?