27 January 2012 Comment

The 2011 Bocce Awards

Every year, our bocce team gathers at the local pizza place to eat, drink and reminisce about the previous season. This year was no different.

Every year, I make an award for each member of our team. For a few years, it was framed certificates, then medallions to hang about the neck.

This year, we went for a more musical attribution.

Each Joanie Loves Bocce teammate received an award and a matching song. I burned the songs on a mix cd. Eleven songs, eleven cds, one for each of member of my favorite bocce team in the whole world.

I put the individual cd covers together on my ferry ride. I may have confused the other commuters with my arts and crafts but I had a lot of fun in the meantime.

Each award mapped nicely to these Mexican loteria cards that I picked up at a local grocery store. (Napa Valley visitor pro tip! For a cheap wine country lunch, stop for tasty tacos at the La Azteca grocery store.)

Lasts night we distributed the awards over pizza and wine with lots of love.
We can’t wait for next year.

I think we’ll make it to playoffs, don’t you?

26 January 2012 Comment

Happy distractions

Now that I’m back in my routine, it’s much easier to focus on the small, the regular, and that which is awesome.

Oh, the freedom that comes with deciding only to focus on one’s health, finances and storytelling for a year.
It’s glorious.

No worries about my personal brand, no back bending machinations to make all the events and the parties happen and all the recipes tested and all the drawings and the content calendar and aaaargh I have kids and a job and a husband and a dog.
(Only a few tardy emails. Yep, I’ll get back to you soon.)

Mom’s recovering!
I didn’t need that mole anyway!
My muscles are aching!
My lentils are done!
That project seems fun but, sorry, I can’t help!

That said, tonight is our bocce awards ceremony. With the help of a few teammates, I’ve made awards for each member of the team as I do every year.
(When was the last time you attended a local awards ceremony? Maybe you should throw one for your church group, your softball team or any group that means a lot to you.)

We do this at a local pizza restaurant every year, just like when we were eight. The season ended in October, so we haven’t seen our team in a while.

I can’t wait to see them.

The small, the regular and that which is awesome.
I need to try this more often.

23 January 2012 3 Comments

Unexpected

Well that was unexpected.
Weeping uncontrollably in the physical therapy room, that is.

Not because I was dealing with my mom,
whose body won’t ever be the same,
whose frenetic pace simply stopped,
whose personality is, different.

but because,
oh hey surprise!
I haven’t properly dealt with the trauma from James’ accident.
I know, huh?
What the hell is that about?

Helen Jane, you shut your face, this isn’t about you.
This is your mom’s stroke.
What’s your problem, making her trauma about you?

Except it is about me.
Up in here, it’s always about me.
As it’s always about you.

Long time readers, remember that accident?
Less time readers, let me catch you up.

Nine years ago,
(after James and I had been married for three months)
James fell from a big height,
breaking much of the left side of his body.

For nearly a year, we navigated a hostile medical world through multiple surgeries, wheelchairs and physical therapy.

It’s become a cute footnote,
an adorable anecdote
about The Trials of the First Year of Marriage.

As I sat with Mom in her physical therapy,
these memories assaulted me,
punching my head from behind.

One after the other,
the memories broke front,
visions of waiting rooms,
loading the wheelchair in the borrowed two-door civic,
giving my new husband a bath,
fearing the loss of this man I hardly knew but loved more than anything,
sleeping next to the couch on the air mattress,
panic in the face of uncontrolled pain.

Even though her therapy wasn’t about me.
Even though I was to be positive,
encouraging and
full of healing energy,
I broke down.

Assaulted by complete helplessness
where someone I love very much is
now unable to control their meatsack of a body.

Really, aren’t these bodies the worst?
(Don’t even get me started on these brains of ours.)

I excused myself,
had a good cry and
promised myself I’d work on some healing of my own this year.

Sooner than later, before more than after,
I have to get on this stuff.
I have to prioritize some things that have fallen away.

From dealing with the fallout from Mom’s stroke to
re-experiencing the emotions of an emotional trauma I thought I was way past,
to newly recognizing myself as
simply a middle-aged mother of two,
rounding the corner of my best years -
It appears I need to do some healing.

In the meantime, I am to be gentle with myself.
you are to be gentle with yourself.

Because we’re just trudging through this human experience the only way know how.

20 January 2012 1 Comment

Checking in from Wisconsin

I am an expert in annoyance.
I also excel at frustration.
In exasperation, I graduated at the top of my class.

In sadness, however, I an a solid D minus.

Funneling my sadness into
annoyance,
frustration and
exasperation has always worked for me.

Annoyance means it’s someone else’s fault,
Frustration shows me they’re not doing it the right [my] way
Exasperation, well, for crumps sake, could you be any more wrong?

Here in Wisconsin, three inches of snow on the car, 14° F outside, I’m so full of sadness it’ has spilled out of the funnel. There’s too much sadness that I can’t wipe it up before it falls on the counter, fills up the room and spills out the door.

I can’t.
I can’t turn it into annoyance, frustration or exasperation.
I can’t.

There’s sadness all over the place and I can’t can’t can’t do anything other than sit with it.
And just, be sad.

Uncool,
to be unwilling to find the bright side or the
progress or the
gratitude or the
myriad of positive coping strategies our sweet internet is full of.

So uncool, in this country, to just be sad.

We sit and we tell the same story six times again and we wait for bedpans and we cry and we cry and we cry and we cry, because we are sad.

And no amount of annoyance, frustration or exasperation can make it go away.