$%#$@^# Ryan Zimmerman . . .

People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
– Rogers Hornsby

Holy crap, you guys! The game was about 37 kinds of awesome! Nationals Park is gorgeous, the people who worked there were all super friendly, despite what must have been a very stressful day, our seats were better than I expected them to be, and Brian McCann, my baseball boyfriend, warmed up 10 yards from me! It doesn’t get any better than that!

Well, ok: it could have been better had it not been freezing, and had I not taken more crap from Nats fans for wearing my Braves cap than I’ve ever taken in Shea Stadium (which, for those of you who don’t know, is in New York, and is the home of the Mets), and had the Braves, you know, WON. But besides that . . . there was beer and hot dogs and Cracker Jacks, Take Me Out to the Ballgame and Sweet Caroline, home runs and pick offs. I don’t think you can ask for anything more.

And as a fan of the game, I appreciate what it means for the Nationals to win their first game in their new home and in such dramatic fashion. I mean, that’s the dream, isn’t it? Bottom of the ninth, tie ball game, two outs, and Ryan Zimmerman hits a walkoff home run – it’s a beautiful thing, really. (It’s probably my fault anyway, karma pushing back at me, telling me I’d gone too far with my mocking “Ryan, Ryan, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, nobody can!” chanting as he stepped in the batter’s box.)

On a side note, I’d like to address the fact that people booed the President when he took the mound to throw out the first pitch. No matter what you think of President Bush politically, I think it’s inappropriate to publicly disrespect him. A baseball game isn’t a political setting; he was there as a figurehead to serve a ceremonial purpose, and he should have, in my opinion, been shown much more respect inside the stadium (the protesters outside I have no problem with). Don’t clap if you don’t want to, but for crying out loud, don’t boo him. All it did was show the country how classless Nats fans can be, and I don’t think that’s quite what the organization had hoped for on a day when the eyes of the sporting world were all focused on the nation’s capital. That was the one disappointment for me in an otherwise great night.

Moving on, Nate and I had a blast; I heckled the Nats a bit (“Nick, be careful Nick – wouldn’t want to break the other leg!”) and got (mostly) good natured ribbing in return from the Nationals faithful; I shared high fives with a few renegade Braves fans after Francoeur evened the score in the top of the ninth on a passed ball; and I took a ton of pictures – you can go here for my complete album (with captions and commentary).

I cannot wait to go back again (twice) at the end of April, and then it will be a long summer until August when I have tickets again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold out that long; maybe Karen will come up one weekend and we’ll get grandstand tickets with the kids.

The rest of the league opened today, so it’s official – baseball season is underway! Go Braves!

Let’s Play Ball!

“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.”
– Greg, age 8

I love baseball. Love it. There’s no place in the world I’d rather be on a warm spring day than at a ballpark, with a cold beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other, listening to the crack of the bat and the cheers of the crowd.

I played ball myself for about 12 years, from the time I was 7 or 8 until I graduated from high school. I still play now whenever I get the opportunity, which isn’t often, and I miss it. In high school, I lived across the railroad tracks from the baseball field at the local college, and I used to go watch the boys play and dream that one of them would notice me in the stands (I was partial to a second baseman named Mike [and Karen laughs, because of course his name was Mike]), but of course that never happened.

Going to a big league ballpark is one of life’s better experiences, in my opinion, and I try to go as often as I can. This season, I’ve got tickets to four Nationals games at the new stadium, and partly by design and partly by luck, three of those games are against the Braves, who are “my” team, including Opening Night tonight. Tickets to tonight’s game sold out in six minutes, because everyone wants to see the new stadium, and I was lucky enough to score two of them. The seats aren’t nearly as good as the ones I had at RFK in September, but they overlook the visitors bullpen, and being a Braves fan, that suits me just fine.

Nate is coming up for the game, and although his allegiance runs, inexplicably, to the Cubs, he roots for the Nats against my Braves just to get my goat. But on the flip side, he humors me and my non-stop chatter about my baseball boyfriend Brian McCann (and seriously, why can you not buy his jersey? I love Chipper and Smoltzy and Francoeur as much as the next girl, but let’s show a catcher some love, shall we?), and the looooooong-awaited return of my other baseball boyfriend Mike Hampton, and my love of ballplayers who still wear the short pants and long socks, and the way I shout Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th-inning-stretch, and just generally turn into a big, goofy, giddy dork the second I set foot in a baseball stadium.

Every time I’ve seen the Braves in person, they’ve lost. I’m convinced this is the season that ends, starting now. So think of me around 8:15 tonight when the President is throwing out the first pitch. You can even watch the game if you like – it’s ESPN’s primetime game – maybe you’ll see me in the stands. I’ll be the one in the Braves hat, standing next to a big guy in a Nats shirt. And I’m sure we’ll be the only ones dressed like that.

Spring Has Sprung

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough
– A.E. Housman

This what greeted me when I came up out of the Metro this morning:

Yeah, Navy boys (and one Navy lady) practicing maneuvers or whatever they call that stuff. Not a bad way to start the day, if you ask me.

Then, at lunch, a co-worker and I headed down to the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms – the festival officially starts tomorrow, but it’s going to be a madhouse down there because of the National Marathon, the circus, the Cherry Blossom Festival, and the Kite Festival, and my boss encourages us to take extra time at lunch to go and see them. It wasn’t as sunny as I’d hoped for picture taking purposes, but it was a great day otherwise – warm, breezy, perfect. We headed to the Mall, where I snapped these pictures (if they look cut off, click on them to get the full picture; trying to resize them all to the right proportions is making me crazy):

Then we came upon the, literally, thousands of cherry blossom trees that surround the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial. Here are my favorite pictures:

And here’s my really favorite:

On the way back we saw this amazing tree, and I just love this picture:

And then . . . we saw this group of dorks, and I had to have a picture of them:

The guy on the far right is the tour guide. Yes, you can take a Segway tour of the monuments. Cool or dorky? I can’t really decide.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and a great way to work in a 3-mile walk on my lunch hour (and a half). The schedule of events for the Cherry Blossom Festival says they have a guided running tour in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday. I’m tempted, but maybe I better wait til next year when I’m a real runner!

Real

“Real isn’t how you are made. It is a thing that happens to you. Once you are Real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
– the Skin Horse, in The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

This is my mouse. I’ve had him as long as I can remember. I don’t sleep with him anymore, but it’s only because, as you can see, all his stuffing is falling out.

Everyone thinks he’s a girl, because he’s pink, but he’s not. They also always have to ask if he’s a rabbit, which I don’t quite understand, because he clearly has short, round ears and a long, skinny tail and not tall, skinny ears and a round tail, but whatever. He also doesn’t have a name. Is that weird?

When I studied in Spain in college, I took him with me. I lived with a family and one day I came home from school and he was not in my room. My “mom” had taken it upon herself to wash him with the rest of my laundry, and when she brought him back to me, he had shrunk to about half his size! But he was definitely clean, and he eventually fluffed back up, which was a relief. I don’t remember if he’d ever been washed before that, but I know he hasn’t been washed since, because I fear that would be the end of him.

He used to rattle, but he doesn’t anymore. I’m not quite sure what happened; it’s a mystery. I’ve sewed his holes several times, but I think patches are the only thing that might save him now. Maybe I’ll look into it, because he lives on my bookshelf now and I kind of miss him.

Dancing With One Star in Particular

Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.
– Tom Krause

Ok, if Marlee Matlin can dance on TV in front of millions of people, surely I can sing karaoke in a bar in front of 30 drunk people, right? (Which would, hopefully, be a prelude to something more official and public.)

In all seriousness, I’ve never watched much of Dancing With the Stars, and I forgot to watch last night, even though I meant to, but I saw this video today, and it actually brought tears to my eyes. I was so proud of her.

And leaving aside the deafness issue, how hot does she look? She’s in her 40s and has 4 kids; I’m 31 and childless, and I wouldn’t look half that good in that dress. Good for her!

Can You Hear Me Now?

The heart must speak, and its search for the perfect outlet is the premise of all artistic expression. When words are insufficient or impossible, and physical gestures fall short, music is a language by which the soul can be heard. But when music itself is unattainable, the silence can be more than one spirit can stand.
– from Music to My Ears, by Timothy White

I was watching Once last weekend – have you seen it? It’s amazing. It’s a love story about an Irish street performer and a Czech musician, and it’s told largely through the music they write and perform in their roles. If you haven’t seen it, you are really missing something wonderful.

The day after their first meeting, she takes him to the music store where the owner lets her play the piano for an hour at lunchtime. He gives her the music to his song, Falling Slowly (the Academy Award winner for best song this year, by the way). He teaches her the basic parts of the song, then he begins to play on his guitar, and she joins him on the piano. He sings the first verse, and she comes in on the chorus, and it was at that point that I started to cry. I just sat there watching in the dark, listening, with tears streaming down my face. The thing was this: I could tell that the song was gorgeous and full and beautiful, but I knew I wasn’t hearing it all, if that makes any sense.

Ever since I lost my hearing, music isn’t as rich of an experience for me as it used to be, and that makes me unspeakably, and sometimes unbearably, sad. Most days, I’m good – this is just how I go through life now, you know? It is what it is, and it doesn’t do any good to lament what I lost. But there are moments every once in a while where I just get blindsided by the heartache of growing up as a hearing person – someone whose life was enveloped in music, who used to play instruments and dance, and more than anything else, sing – and being reduced to this.

I haven’t sung in public since I lost my hearing because I’m afraid that I won’t be on key and I’ll embarrass myself.* Some days I’m sure I could do it, after almost 5 years with my implant, but I never take steps to try, because if I fail, I’ll be devastated. Once, about 9 months after I lost my hearing, a friend asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I told her I really wanted to get people together and go do karaoke, but that I was afraid because I was never sure if I was on pitch when I sang along with the radio. She looked at me sadly and said, “You aren’t.” She said it gently, and she meant well, but it broke my heart then, and it’s always in the back of my mind when I think about trying now. I still sing – my nephew has his own theme song that I made up for him, the Princess loves to hear “Winnie the Pooh” (House at Pooh Corner, by Kenny Loggins), and I sing out loud to myself when I’m alone – but singing for yourself is a distinct experience from singing for an audience, and I miss that so much.

And I can’t just turn on the radio anymore, because without context – the title of the song on my iPod screen, for instance, or knowing the order of tracks on a CD that I’ve owned since before I lost my hearing – new (meaning post-2002) music is mostly just noise to me. I’m am very much out of the loop when it comes to whatever’s hot these days. I’ve downloaded a fair number of songs I didn’t know before I lost my hearing, but to recognize them without cues requires finding the lyrics online and listening along multiple times. Even then I’m never sure if the melody I hear is the true melody of the song.

So this, you see, is the great sadness of my life. There’s nothing like music, is there? I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, several years before I lost my hearing, and looking back over some of the quotes I copied from it makes my spirit ache a little bit:

She had just drawn whatever came into her head without reason – and in her heart it didn’t give her near the same feeling that music did. Nothing was really as good as music.

I’ll say.

But all the time – no matter what she was doing – there was music. Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts. Some she heard over the radios, and some was in her mind already without her ever having heard it anywhere.

I copied that down when I read it because I think it describes me to a tee, even now. And I do still have music – anything I knew before I lost my hearing is mostly readily available in my memory, and when I hook my implant up to my iPod, the music fills my head and I can still hear that opening guitar riff from Boys of Summer or the organ on Hear Me in the Harmony, the clarity of Celine Dion’s voice (shut up; I’m a sucker for a power ballad) or David Gray’s wavering tenor, the perfect harmony on the chorus of When I Said I Do or the gorgeous piano melody of Mandolin Rain. It makes me cry and uplifts me all at the same time, because just knowing that music even exists at all is really something, isn’t it?

* Edited to add: I just remembered that I have done karaoke once since I lost my hearing, in law school, but I didn’t sing by myself, so I don’t count it.

Hear Me Roar

Women are afraid of mice and murder, and of and very little in between.
– from The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, by Mignon McLaughlin

I was walking home from the bus last night and as I passed my car in the parking lot, I noticed a note on my windshield. I picked it up, turned it over, and found that some nice neighbor of mine had kindly advised me that I had a flat rear right tire. I went around to the passenger side, and sure enough, I did. Closer inspection revealed a screw lodged between the treads in the middle of the tire. I was inexplicably ill at the time, however, so I didn’t do anything about it last night.

Today, though, I was able to leave work early to come home and take care of it. Now, I’ve never actually changed a tire before, and I wasn’t convinced I could do it. I tried once, about 6 years ago, but I couldn’t get the lug nuts off no matter how hard I tried, and I sat in the parking lot and cried until someone took pity on me and stopped to help. (I’m not proud of that, but in my defense, it was three weeks after I lost my hearing, and two weeks after I’d fallen and torn my rotator cuff, and I’d just come out to the parking lot to discover I had a flat, so I was just about at the end of my rope.)

Anyway, luckily, there was no one in the space next to me, so I unloaded my trunk and strategically placed the removed items outside the empty space so that someone wouldn’t come careening into the space and kill me before I could triumph over the tire. See?

The stool I brought down from my apartment so I wouldn’t have to kneel on the pavement; I was glad more than once that I thought of that. Then, I carefully followed the instructions in my manual – so nice of them to provide that, I think – and popped off the hubcap, and was able, with a fair amount of effort on my part (that torn rotator cuff is going to be sore tomorrow, that’s for sure) to loosen the lug nuts. That’s when I knew I was home free.

Once the lug nuts were loose, I carefully placed the jack under the car precisely where the manual said to:

And then it took about 100 years to crank the thing up because I had to keep taking the wrench off at the end of each revolution because it would hit the ground. There’s probably a way around that, a secret that only boys know or something, but whatever. I got the big tire off and the little, puny, sad-excuse-for-a-tire spare on, lowered the jack, tightened the lug nuts and I was done! In under 35 minutes, and all by myself! I was quite proud; I even had axle grease all over my hands.

Then I drove to CostCo to see about replacing the tire. I was so psyched when the guy told me the screw was in the “perfect” place and I wouldn’t actually have to replace the tire, I could just get it plugged (the tires were close to brand new when I bought the car in November, so I was not happy at the prospect of having to replace one, if not two, of them). He couldn’t do it for me because I didn’t buy my tires there, so I drove to a service station to see if they could. They could and they did, and it only cost me $20! I gave the guy an extra $5 for himself because he did it so quickly and then spent about 10 minutes getting my jack and spare securely back in the trunk.

So, yay me! I feel oddly accomplished. This is the kind of thing I think a lot of women would automatically outsource, either to a significant other or to AAA, and I feel proud that I did it myself.

Maybe for an encore I should learn to change my own oil.

Things I’ve Bought That I Love*

* with apologies to Mindy Kaling (aka Kelly Kapoor, on The Office)

The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.
– Marcelene Cox

Ok, here’s a brief list of things I’ve bought recently that I adore, and want to share with you in the hopes that you might love them too:

• Gap Essential cut jeans: I’ve had to find new places to shop since losing weight, because I sized out of the places I relied on for years. That’s a great feeling, to be sure, but it’s also been kind of a pain in the ass, because before, I could walk into a store, pick my preferred style of jeans in the size I’d worn forever, pay for them and be done in under 10 minutes. Now I actually have to try stuff on, and I have to take three sizes of everything into the dressing room because I don’t know how the sizes run in “normal” stores. Anyway, when I was in Houston with Aimee, we went to the Gap at the Galleria and she patiently waited while I tried on about 20 different pairs of jeans – different sizes in different cuts and different washes (shopping is hard) – but it was worth it, because these are the jeans I was meant to wear.

• Naturalizer Leisure Plus knee-high boots: I have been on a quest to find knee-high black boots for I don’t know how long. Apparently I have freakishly large calves, because I could never find a pair that I could zip up. I tried everywhere, even Zappos, the online shoe mecca. Everything I bought, I had to return, and I was convinced I just was not meant to wear knee-high boots. But then one day, I was perusing Zappos again, convinced it was hopeless, sure I’d tried every boot they had to offer, and lo, I came upon this pair. I ordered them without much confidence (but with great security – Zappos offers free overnight shipping and returns, so I wouldn’t be out any money if they didn’t fit), and they arrived the next day. I opened the box with trepidation, slid them on, and then, the heavens opened up, the sun shined down, and angels started singing – they fit! I wish they were leather, but hey – beggars can’t be choosers, huh? Now I just need to find a brown pair and my life will be complete.

• Canon Powershot A720 IS: This was my birthday present to myself, as you may know, and I love it. 8 megapixels, 6x zoom, video capability, and a ton of other stuff I don’t even know how to use yet.

• Cadbury Creme Eggs: Maybe this one’s a little silly, but I know Spring is just around the corner when I see these at CVS (who, luckily – or not – sells them for the low, low price of 2 for a dollar). I know some people are repulsed by them, but I love them better than any other Easter candy (except maybe jelly beans, but you can get jelly beans all year round). In case you’re not familiar with these, Wiki helpfully explains: “The egg has a thick milk chocolate ’shell’, with a white and yellow fondant filling designed to resemble the yolk and albumen of an egg.” Sounds gross, tastes great!

• Trader Joe’s Organic Jasmine Rice: This is genius. It’s a box of three bags of frozen rice – no additives or preservatives or anything. All you have to do is cut a small hole in the bag, pop it in the microwave for three minutes, and next thing you know, you have perfectly cooked rice for two! They also have brown rice, which I love as well – the brown rice I cook from a box does not turn out like that – but they never have both at the same time. The guy said it had something to do with customs, I don’t really know.

• Simply Enjoy Thai Peanut Asian Sauce: I think this is the store brand from Stop & Shop, but I bought it at Giant, and I think it’s available at Safeway as well. It’s delicious – it’s the only store-bought dressing I’ve found that comes anywhere close to the peanut dressing on my favorite salad in the world, the Santa Fe Chicken Salad at the Cheesecake Factory (I have them leave off the cilantro dressing and just bring me the peanut dressing). I’ve not actually used it on salad myself (but now that you mention it, I think I might try to recreate that one at home), but I dip pot stickers (another Trader Joe’s favorite) and egg rolls in it, and I add it to chicken stir frys. It is delicious, and not bad calorie-wise (70 cal, 4g fat – no saturated or trans fat – per 2 tablespoons, which is more than enough).

• Cover Girl LipSlicks: This isn’t a new find, but it’s really the only lip stick/gloss I’ve worn for 5 years (I remember that I bought it for the first time to wear in Nate’s wedding) so I thought I’d spread the gospel. I wear Daring, which is a wine/red/burgundy color, but there are lots of others to choose from. It’s sheer, not sticky, and gives plenty of color and shine. It’s the perfect lip color, in my opinion; I keep one in every bag.

That’s it for now. But tell me: do you love any of these products, too? Or is there something else you’ve loved forever or just discovered you can’t live without? I want to know!

Therapy

“I’m scared that I’m so crazy.”
“Oh, we’re all crazy, honey. But most of us don’t have your style.”
— Elizabeth and Rae, in Crooked Little Heart, by Anne Lamott

So . . . I started counseling again tonight. Yeah, on a Friday night. Obviously, one of my issues is that I have no life. Anyway, I don’t mind telling you this because I’ve always said that I think everyone should be in therapy: Where else can you spend an hour (and $100+, but who’s counting?) talking about yourself to someone who has to listen to you and isn’t allowed to talk about themselves in return?

I don’t know if I dig my counselor, though. I kind of hit the counselor jackpot with my last two – the one I saw for two years after I first lost my hearing and the one I saw during my last year in law school – so I’m a bit spoiled. This one was a bit quick to hit the “you’re clearly depressed maybe you need medication” button, and that always makes me wary. (I don’t dispute that anti-depressants are helpful for some people, but I generally think people (and doctors) in the U.S. today are too quick to medicate problems instead of trying to reach the root of them.) Plus, she’s significantly older than I am, which makes it feel a little like I’m talking to my mom. My last counselor was actually younger than I am – she was a 4th-year doctoral student – and we completely clicked, which made counseling much easier than it might otherwise have been. Also, this having a full-time job thing really makes it difficult to find time to go once a week. Friday nights are the only time she has evening hours, which kind of bites: “No, sorry, I can’t have drinks after work tonight; gotta rush home to meet my shrink.” That’s totally cool.

So I’m debating going back. I know I need to – if not with her, then with someone else – and I have an appointment for two weeks from tonight, but I’m not sold. Mostly I feel like I’m cruising along ok, but then some little thing happens and it knocks me on my ass, then I get up and start cruising along ok again, but then something else happens . . . you get the idea. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that I seem ok on the outside, even to myself, but the inside is actually a giant mess, and I can’t keep trying to hide it or pretend it’s not like that. And I don’t think I can fix it alone.

Cheap Date

There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
– Dan Greenberg

My cat, Pico, has a beautiful bed that I bought him at Pet Smart several months ago. I spent, I think, $25 on it:

I bought it because it matches my living room furniture, red and khaki, and he seemed to like it just fine for a while, even if he couldn’t quite figure out how to fold himself into it:

But then I went and bought running shoes. I took them out of the box in the living room and left the box on the floor. Next thing I know, Pico took up residence:

I didn’t have the heart to take the box out to the recycling because he looks so cute trying to squish his considerable girth into that little rectangle. Luckily, though, I recently opened some presents that were covered in tissue paper, and Pico has now appropriated an errant piece of it for his bed, so we’re good:

Do your pets do weird things like this, too?