Click images for desktop size: "Feathers" by Steve Truett So much going on. My housemate is finally moving out. This is good. I was paying half the rent and all the bills but living in one room with my puppy. He filled up the rest of the house with kibble and junk. (See Philip K Dick's “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep” to properly understand the properties of kibble.)
I'v been advertising for new housemates. There comments have been on the order of, “You must be pretty calm to have put up with this!”
But as much as that bothers me, its less than his never cleaning or helping with cleaning or even just watching me clean. That's trivial but merely disconcerting at times. It bothers me that when he's alone with my puppy he's created some odd behavior patterns within her. I finally figured out its his odd habit of teasing animals, not viciously mind you, but in a way that blurs his concept of others. Its something I can deal with but don't need to.
The other worry is that when he goes, on short notice . . . I'll be stuck for twice the rent, as its clear no one will want to rent the place while it is filled to overflowing with his kibble that means I'll be living extremely thinly for a while. But I'll be living, my puppy will be happy and that's good enough.
The pain has been really bad. The pain killers I take are prescription strength ibuprofen. I realized all they were was double the strength of the stuff you buy at Walgreens, double the strength for 8 times the price! So I just double up on the cheap stuff and save the prescription for real, “O my god, I'm out!” style emergencies. Then I realized I was up to double the prescription dosage so I figured I had better cut down! I tried taking one of the narcotic ones (No more than 2 in a 24 hour period) and they do work but the price is too high.
Mainly I deal with pain by ignoring it as best I can.
I deal with the stress like the house and money by thinking it through until I've come to a conclusion and then not thinking about it again.
Sports do a great job of keeping my mind off of these things, but the Sunday games were terrible! Some stellar performances dotted in but this was just a boring Sunday.
Now that the Dodgers have fallen out of first place (I know I'm not a big pro sports fan but I was raised in the Ocean and at Chavez Ravine {Dodger's home field}) even baseball was not fun to think about. I've already worked out my coaching strategy for the week. We have a big game this Friday night - cross town rival and the winner has the inside track on making the State playoffs - and I had to focus on where best to put our limited practice time.
So I did a LOT of house cleaning . . . odd that I can still feel so sick and so much pain while performing the required drudgery.
What I thought about was a question the kids are always asking me: What was the best championship I ever won?
They wouldn't like the answer.

Click images for desktop size: "Un Dia De Relax" by Libros They look up to me because I've played big time college ball. Its the next step they want to take. I'm blind enough to think that there's no reason any player can't do what I do.
A lot of coaches think I'm foolish to believe this. Its the same coaches who think I was foolish in thinking a British kid could ever make it to the NFL.
They were wrong there too. You can never ever discount the power of a dream.
But my favorite championship?
It was not football but baseball. And not College ball but Little League. It wasn't even the first one my team won. I was 10 years old. My buddy Tom was 11. Tom was 6'2“ then and I was 5'9”. We learned early to always keep our birth certificates in our back pockets on game day.
This was just a neighborhood team, a park league, because back then they made sure there was money for park leagues. I think they used 1/2 of 1% of the money they now earmark for prisons.
We didn't even have a coach. We did, you had to have an adult, but he went to jail for alimony or something. Jail scared us too much to investigate fully. So we would round up whatever adult we could find and get him or her to present our line up card to the umpires.
Sometimes our emergency managers would even stay and watch part of the game.
I think we were undefeated that season. I remember the championship game was a pretty lop sided victory. I mean we were all gremmies, super fit kids who loved playing the game.
The only thing I remember about it was Pete making one of his patented catches where he climbed the 5 foot chain link fence and dived off of it to steal a homer from our opponents.
Pete did that stuff all the time but this time was remarked upon because the opposing manager, a real serious guy complained about it bitterly to the umps.
So we won and all got our little trophies and one big trophy.
Pretty soon everyone else had gone and we were there looking at our trophies and not feeling much of anything at all. There were 12 of us so we chose up sides and played six on six. We would play it that odd innings right field was an automatic out - even innings left field was an automatic out. That way we were convinced we'd learn to pull the ball!
We played until it was too dark to see. While we played I realized we were the best, the 12 of us were the best team in the area. My team won that game against ourselves.
Its my favorite and most memorable championship. Still.

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