Back in the Buff

5 Jun

Niagara Falls

This last weekend, I met up with my family in Buffalo, New York to bring my grandfather’s ashes to my aunt’s and grandmother’s graves.

I left Buffalo when I was 11-years-old, and this was my first journey back. I was curious as to what it would feel like, what I would remember. It turns out I remember very little. We visited old homes, drove by old churches, and I had faint recollections of different moments of my childhood. I’ve written before about the idea of home. I still feel envious of people who have a hometown or a place that they can return to and restore themselves. I lived in Reno for 8 odd years, but now that city feels like the place my parents and a couple of friends live. Buffalo is an even larger abstraction to me.

One thing that is important to mention is that I’m not actually from Buffalo proper, I’m from a suburb called Williamsville, and that is where we spent the majority of the weekend. Williamsville is frankly adorable. Lots of open spaces, parks, a main street full of little shops and unique restaurants, a dog groomer called “Oh, You Dirty Dog” and a funeral home called “Am I Gone”  for instance. I didn’t see too many chains, noticed no graffiti, and all the homes looked well-kept.

We drove up and down the streets we used to know, everyone reminiscing. The second house I lived in was two blocks from my grandparent’s house, and driving down that street, I can remember riding my tricycle in the dusky evenings after dinner, my grandmother meeting us halfway, waving at our little family.

The Fourth Home

Our fourth home appeared in front of me in an eerie way, like a dream. I suppose I did spend my first couple of years in Nevada dreaming that I was back in the house we called “Green Gables” for obvious reasons. I knew it existed in the world, but I didn’t expect it to be so exactly the way it looked when we left.

I felt like an amnesia patient being shone pictures from the past. Every memory felt like it was on the tip of my tongue, yet I couldn’t name it, couldn’t understand the distance between myself and what had happened there.

At one point, one of the members of my small four-person immediate family said something about how they wondered what our lives would have been like if we hadn’t moved across the continent to live in the desert, who would we be now. We all quietly agreed that it is something we’ve often thought about. Two completely different lives.

It was a sad and strange weekend. I’ve never spread someone’s ashes before, and I had never actually visited the grave site of my aunt and grandmother before. It was also a lovely weekend. I got to go on the Maid of the Mist with my parents, a boat ride right up to the horseshoe falls at Niagara, so beautiful, so much mist and power. I ate a foot long at my favorite hot dog stand IN THE WORLD. Old Man Rivers. My mother and I had a much needed heart-to-heart over Pina Coladas at the hotel bar. There’s nothing like your mom reassuring you that everything is going to be okay. We gorged on insanely hot wings at Duff’s, again the best Buffalo wing place IN THE WORLD. We laughed with each other, we talked about the past, we talked about our presents. There weren’t any fights or bickering this time, we were one big happy family, and it was an amazing weekend with them.

Duff’s

Buffalo is by no stretch of the imagination glamorous. It’s a busted boom city with a couple of humble neighborhoods. But for a long time it was home, and a part of my heart still resides there. A part of my heart that I was happy to visit one more time.

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NY Writer’s Coalition

3 Jun

About a year ago, when I was at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I ended up signing up for a bevy of email lists for different writing groups in New York. I want so badly to live a more writerly existence, but I simply haven’t figured out a way to balance writing with making a living, cooking dinner, traveling, hanging out with friends. So I sign up for a bunch of things hoping something will shine the light on how to write a novel whilst having a full life.

One of the groups I ended up signing up for is the New York Writers Coalition. It’s a pretty neat organization that sponsors different writing events and uses their resources to bring creative writing lessons to communities that can benefit from the outlet.

I have admittedly not been very active with them, but I recently saw their newest event, a write-a-thon, and decided to sign up. Ira Glass is going to give a motivational speech, and I have an unbelievable nerd crush on him.

I’m supposed to fund raise for this, but fundraising makes me so utterly uncomfortable. I hate asking people to give me their money, especially when I somehow end up getting to do something cool because of the donation, like hang out with Ira Glass. But it is a good cause, and I figured posting something on here would be less irritating than sending out some sort of a mass email. I plan on donating a good amount when it is closer to the actual write-a-thon date.

So if you are interested in helping a good cause or even signing up yourself if you live in the New York area, here is the site. I appreciate anything you can put towards the cause!

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I Gamble

29 May

I got so many wonderful responses to my “I Quit” post that I thought I should write a follow-up.

The main reason I quit my job was because I hated working at the reception desk. I knew it wasn’t for me, and I was only sticking it out so that I could one day move to the tech position that was promised me. At some point, I felt like I was being shuffled around and was never actually going to get my chance. It seemed the only way I would ever have a chance at being a full-time technician was if I quit the reception desk and cleared up my schedule. So I gambled.

I’m a good Reno girl who knows how to gamble responsibly. For me, the key is always to not put at risk too much. Sure, you have to bet big to win big, but no one wants to lose their house or their entire life savings. Gamble what is feasible to lose. I am in a lucky position in life where I can be unemployed. I have the financial resources; I don’t have anyone depending on me; I have a lot of support from those close to me.

So I felt it was a 50/50 chance that in quitting my job I would be offered the technician position. But if that didn’t happen, I was still okay with my decision. It was still worth it.

So I quit. The following week was difficult as some of the upper management began acting rude towards me. It hurt, because I was under the impression that I was a good employee, that I’d put in over a year of hard work, and I deserved much better treatment. I accepted that my time at the clinic was over, and I was meant to move on.

Then, last Tuesday, I was called into the clinic owner’s office. I thought he was going to hand me some sort of a project for my last few days. Instead he sat me down, said a lot of uncharacteristically kind things to me and offered me the technician job. Apparently, the woman that has been training me the last couple of months insisted that they hire me, that they were being foolish if they didn’t. I was surprised by his offer, and I decided to take it.

It’s good training, and in many ways what I wanted to happen, but at the same time, I find myself disappointed. I’m not entirely happy with where I work, and oddly enough, a part of me was excited about being unemployed. I feel like that is such a callous and foolish thing to say. There are millions of people out there that are struggling with unemployment, so I find it hard to sit and whine about having a job. I should be grateful. It is the job I wanted after all.

But a part of me wanted to have time to write, to travel, to lay in the sun in Central Park, to visit friends and family, to spend an afternoon plotting out my life and scheming for the future. But it’s off to work I go. Don’t get me wrong I am happy, but there is always a part of me that will wonder if I could be happier.

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Memorizing a Poem

26 May

My path to poetry was atypical. I suppose everyone’s is. I was never a big fan, other than Shakespeare which for some bizarre reason I never really considered to be poetry. When I made the decision to apply to the Creative Writing track at my university, I dreaded the fact that I would have to take poetry classes. To me, poetry was pretentious, obtuse and a dying art form. I felt like all the required verse classes I had to take were a giant waste of my time. Prose had always been my natural mode of writing, and I wanted to spend as much time as possible perfecting it.

Then, there was Steve Dold.

Steve Dold. I don’t know where to start. He was my junior year poetry writing professor. He was a dreamboat. Every girl in our class was madly in love with him. He would strut into class with his leather jacket and tousled hair. When he read poetry aloud, he’d get this dreamy look in his eyes and take on a high-pitched intonation which was comical yet entrancing. He taught us iambic pentameter by relating it to a steady heartbeat. A 20-year-old girl’s heart didn’t stand a chance.

Our assignments were pretty standard creative writing stuff. We would read a bevy of a certain type of poem then write our own. One week we worked on narrative, another week we worked on sonnets. The only other requirement he had for us was to memorize a poem, just one, any one we liked.

“I believe this will be the most important thing you take away from this class,” I remember him saying. “You will have this poem in your mind if you choose to keep it with you in your life. At some dark hour, when you most need it, it will be there, a calming refrain, a gift you give yourself.”

I rolled my eyes and decided that I would just pick a random villanelle. Villanelle is a highly structured poem based on French poetry. There are a couple of repeating refrains, a strict meter, and a predictable rhyme scheme. I figured this would be an easy form to learn. I checked out a book from the library full of them, I read a couple and found one that struck me. As I read it aloud, something about it was so pleasant, so perfect, and although I didn’t completely grasp the meaning, it affected my heart in a positive way.

I set myself to memorizing it one night when I was home alone in my apartment. I remember making Macaroni and Cheese, taking a shower, cleaning up my room, all while repeating the poem over and over again to myself.

With each repetition, something happened. I became more and more attached to each line. What was originally an interesting but opaque poem became a poem that meant something, each line revealing itself to me more and more.

I memorized that poem and still know it by heart. I went on to focus on writing and reading poetry. When I bring up poetry to people, they often groan and say they just don’t get it, that it’s too academic. Nothing irks me more. Poetry takes time. It is rare to read through a poem and understand it and be done with it. Poetry is meant to dwell with, to spend time with the words, the variety of meanings, to pull something from it for yourself. When I originally set to memorizing a poem, the poem had little meaning to me, except that I enjoyed the first line. Now it is a source of comfort when I’m feeling down. Yes, at dark times in my life, that poem comes to mind and it means something to me. It might not mean anything to anyone else, and it might not mean to me what was originally intended by the poet, but that’s not the point of poetry. It’s an art, and we are to take from it whatever we need.

The Waking

I will forever be thankful to Steve Dold for that.

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Neuticles

17 May

Obviously Melanie does not have neuticles. OBVIOUSLY.

This post has nothing to do with the cat pictured above. I’m once again luring you in. Did I trick you twice? I play dirty.

Melanie was a heavily matted Persian that I helped one of the techs shave down. I didn’t like her at first, because of the whole trying to kill me thing that happened when I restrained her for the shave. But she quickly grew on me. Every time I looked over to her cage, her cranky face and weird body made me smile. By end of day, I was enamored with this little old lady.

This is about Neuticles, though.

Work has sucked this last week. I have one more week to go, but a lot of the upper management are giving me major ‘tude. Plus we’ve just had difficult clients come in like a parade of neurotic assholes. I feel as though I’m barely holding my sanity together. It’s the brief moments of veterinary oddity and joy that keep me going. Last night I had to stay crazy late at work and was swamped. Dr. R was equally frustrated and upset about having to take on three emergency patients. But to cheer me up, she showed me how Dr. C (our crazy but fun-loving weekend doctor) had written in the chart, “Dog extremely aggressive… must muzzle-tov.” She then clapped her hands and did a little Hora dance. It was pretty uplifting.

Another entertaining moment was when I learned about Neuticles. Neuticles are testicular implants for dogs. Yep. You can read that sentence again, if you feel so inclined. Some people in this world are so wealthy that they have money to spend on testicular implants for their dogs. And one of the doctors at my clinic, Dr. G, is a soft tissue surgeon who has implanted them a couple of times.

“Why, God, why?” you might be asking yourself. So far I have found three reasons. The first one I figured out quickly. Show dogs. In order to compete in shows, a dog must be intact. Leaving a dog intact makes them rather unruly and prone to health issues that make them difficult to show. Plus there is the possibility that he might knock up a bitch and you have a bunch of puppies on your hands. So, some wealthy show dog people neuter their dogs anyways and use the implants to fool the dog show judges. Scandalous!

Reason number two, which is the only reason Dr. G has encountered, is that women want to neuter the dog and their husband/boyfriend/significant other does not want it to happen. Men are so strange about testicles, even when they’re not their own. So the women get the implants for their dogs to hide the fact that they secretly neutered the dog. More scandal!

Reason number three: people are shallow. I did a brief search on the internet for neuticles, because I couldn’t remember the name, and I found the company’s website. Featured on the home page is a picture of Kim Kardashian with her neuticled dog. She apparently got them so he wouldn’t feel emasculated, and he would look intact. I don’t understand the wealthy, and sometimes I’m thankful for that.

So there you go, neuticles. In case you were worried, it’s not just for dogs. The website proudly explains that they have also been implanted into cats, monkeys, water buffaloes, and rats! Your pet rat no longer has to feel less because of his tiny/nonexistent balls.

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I quit

15 May

I quit my job.

It still feels shocking to say it or write it, but on Monday, I put in my two week notice and breathed easy for the first time in weeks.

It was such a hard decision, because in a lot of ways, I loved my job. I loved working with animals, training to be a technician, being respected as a good employee.

But in so many ways, I was absolutely miserable. I didn’t like working reception, and I desperately wanted to move to the technician job. Unfortunately my office manager put her foot down, screamed at anyone who wanted to help me, gave me the silent treatment and demanded that I stay in reception. I was apparently too good an employee to lose. I tried everything. I tried reasoning with the practice owners, I tried compromising my schedule, I tried working extra days. I tried demanding the raise I’ve been promised over and over again. It was like I was talking to walls.

Then I got sick. Really sick. I was fainting in strange places, losing vision, feeling numb in my extremities. I was sick to my stomach, and I finally went to a doctor. After a bunch of tests and a lengthy medical history interview, the doctor essentially told me that I was killing myself with stress, and that I needed to cut something out and focus on taking care of myself. I knew what was wrong.

I was miserable Monday through Thursday working at the reception desk. I was angry, frustrated. I could feel tension in my neck and shoulders when I left the office. My only salvation was working as a technician on Fridays. But by the time Friday rolled around I was suffering from exhaustion. I hated my job. I hated the clinic. I was miserable.

So I quit. I’m terrified about what lies ahead, but I’m also so relieved. I’d rather be dead broke and happy, then sorta broke and miserable. Not a huge difference there anyways. I’ve jumped from job to job my whole life without ever taking the time to really look for something that I want to do, that means something to me. I’ve always hired on to whatever place has taken me. And if you’ve heard the stories of my job history, sometimes it worked out well, sometimes it was a nightmare.

I feel free. In two weeks, I can move anywhere in the world. I can spend my days writing. I can actually take a moment to breathe and think about what I want to do.

I’ll find something else. I’ll find something better. After all, it has never been a problem before.

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Sunday Scrubdown

3 May

imageMonths ago, Brian and I were shopping in Soho before heading to a Husky football game. We stopped into a shop neither of us had ever heard of before called Sabon. I have since seen this store all over Manhattan, and I even saw a location in Tokyo.

Anyways, we were browsing when a salesperson asked us if we wanted to wash our hands. Er, okay? We guess so.

In the middle of the store was a large bronze sink with huge spigots. To run the water, there was a pedal by our feet. She looked at us both and assessed what scents we might like. After rinsing our hands, she gave me a scoop of Lavender Apple scrub. I don’t know how she knew, but to me, it was the best smelling thing EVER. After she dried our hands, she gave us our matching scent lotion. Not sure what scent Brian had, but it was semi-manly, like musk or mint.

Our hands were unbelievably soft. As we continued our shopping excursion, we kept sniffing our hands and running them along our faces. So soft, so smooth. We just couldn’t stop. We joked about how we wouldn’t have to pay for anything at the bar, we would simply run our hands along the bartender’s cheek, and they would magically give us whatever we asked for.

I wanted it. I wanted the scrub. I wanted the lotion, but I simply couldn’t justify spending $30 on a tub of scrub, and an additional $23 on lotion. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So a month or so later, I broke down and spent the money, and when they asked me if I wanted the little wooden scoop for an additional $1, I caved and got that too. Because sometimes, you have to treat yo-self.

(NBC will probably disable that video, but hey it’s great while it’s here.)

So now I enjoy what I like to call the Sunday Scrubdown. Every Sunday I allow myself an exceedingly long shower, one where I use the scrub, then I take my time getting ready and using the lotion. I end up feeling surreal the rest of the day, pure silk and enchanting aromas.

$54 well worth it.

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26 Before 26: Go on a Wine Tasting

1 May

The menu for the night.

In my 26th year of life, I am attempting 26 new things that I’ve never done before. Full list here.

This one fell right into my lap. Since coming to New York, I have been fairly active in my alumni group. This has led me to a Pac-12 alumni group, made up of alumni from the larger, West coast schools.

They organize a wine tasting two, maybe three times a year at a fancy Murray Hill restaurant that some alumni’s family owns. It’s an amazing deal, and I was excited to see my Pac-12 friends. Pac-12 softball is gearing up, and I dearly love playing with them in Central Park, then getting rather sloshed at a sports bar in the Upper West Side.

I always thought of a wine tasting as touring some countryside, swirling wine in glasses, sipping it gently, trying to distinguish notes. Maybe that’s how they do it in Napa (I really have no idea), but in New York, we through them back. All of the wines were bottomless. They had waiters walking around filling our wine glasses. Like filling ALL our wine glasses from ALL the courses.

In my early sobriety, I was taking this wine tasting rather seriously, but by first course I didn’t even know what I was drinking, just that the wine was ever-flowing. I was kind of listening to the wine-guy who was talking about special grapes in South Africa. But sitting here in my jammies two weeks later, I can’t tell you a single thing about those wines. Except that they were white. But I didn’t need no sommelier to tell me that.

I like white wines. A controversial opinion, apparently, as most wine-snobs I’ve met in my life have scoffed at such a statement. But I like what I like. I also like fake maple syrup over real maple syrup. Sue me.

Funnily enough, my favorite course/pairing was dessert. Feast your eyes on this beaut…

Mango Mousse with Amarula Cream Liquer

Honestly, I wish there had been five courses of this. It was fantastic. I was certainly not listening to wine-man at this point. All I could really think was “cake cake cake cake cake cake booze cake cake cake…” It was like being a kid and having to wait for your parents to light the candles before you can eat your birthday cake. I’m infamous in my family for prematurely licking the frosting off my birthday cake when I thought no one was looking. No one was looking, except the family friend who was videotaping me. Shame.

To sum up my wine tasting experience, it was a variety of delicious booze. It was an experience akin to most of my weekend excursions. Maybe I didn’t do the experience right? Maybe I should have paid more attention to what I was tasting. I was looking through one of my notebooks the other day, and I found something I had written down last fall.

“I tend to devour, but I am looking for someone to teach me a thing or two about savoring.”

Well, obviously, I have not learned my lesson. But there are certainly more wine tastings in my future.

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Tokyo

29 Apr

An Ueno alleyway

I keep putting off writing about Tokyo simply because of the breadth of things I’d like to describe. There really isn’t a story for me in Tokyo like there was with Yoshino and Kyoto. While in Japan, I spent the longest amount of time in Tokyo. It provided me with my first impression of Japan and my last.

Before my trip, I was a bit anxious about going from one big city to visit another. I knew it would be different, but I was hesitant about spending my vacation in a New York-like city. But, although it is a bustling metropolis, it was so far from what New York is. It was immaculately clean. Everyone was polite. The food was delicious, yet healthy? The fashion on the everyday person was mind boggling. Everyone was stunning. Every corner of Tokyo had thought put into it. At one point, we saw a sewer cover that had a cherry blossom design on it. We shrugged our shoulders and said, “Of course!” The Japanese take such pride in everything that it would be unthinkable to litter. And they make sure every aspect of the city was beautiful in some way. I debated for a while how I wanted to write about Tokyo, and I have settled on bullet points. Like I said, there was no real story to Tokyo, just an incomparable experience.

  • The food. I must start with the food. Some of the best I have ever had in my life. It’s hard to even really describe what I ate, because so many menus and descriptions were written in Japanese. All I know is that it was good. Very good. Ramen? Got some of that in Harajuku at a small cafe. Not the ramen you see in the States, this was hardy, thick, filling. It had a boiled egg and salted pork thrown in. Soba? I had never heard of it before, but yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. These cold handmade noodles that come out on a tray. You pick them up with chop sticks and dip them in some sort of heavenly sauce. We ordered seconds. I can’t remember the last time (or ever) that I ordered seconds at a restaurant. And the hostess would sing all the orders to the cooks in the back. Fried squid balls? Don’t mind if I do. Bento boxes? I’ll take one of those. Tempura? I dream of you. Chocolate covered bananas? No, it’s not quite Japanese, but it was necessary.

    Soba and Tempura Shrimp. More, more, more, please.

  • I know that the last bullet was about food, but this food event deserves its own bullet. My second morning in Japan, I walked from our hotel down to the Tsukiji Fish Market where something like $30million worth of fish is auctioned off every day. I didn’t get up early enough for the auction, but I did catch some breakfast. Catch? Get it? Like fish? Moving on. The market is full of small stalls. I wandered around, but eventually realized that I couldn’t read Japanese, and I couldn’t tell any of these places apart. So I picked one and sat down. Likewise, I didn’t really know what to make of the menu, so I just picked one. I sipped on my complimentary green tea, and was eventually served a huge bowl of white rice and seaweed, piled high with raw fish, lots of it. Again, I don’t speak Japanese, so I’m not exactly clear on what I was eating, but there was some shrimp, some tuna, some white fish, some eggs, some other fish. I was a bit nervous about eating raw fish from an out of the way back stall in Tokyo, but you only live once. BEST BREAKFAST EVER! I’m a huge breakfast person, and this was easily the best one I have ever had. The fish was so fresh. I’ve never tasted fish like that in my life, unadulterated by oil or butter or heat or shipping. It was unreal. It was all so light and fresh and healthy. I left feeling full, but not sleepy full. Just really happy and ready to take on my day full. Amazing. No pictures though. They weren’t allowed.
  • The toilets were an experience. Heated seats, built in bidets and sprays. Optional fake flushing noise to drown out your noises. Perfume sprays. Good shelving to set your purse on. They were fancy everywhere. Why can’t we have this in America? I just don’t understand.
  • Godzilla statue. I spent a long time looking for it. It was really, really small. And I was really, really sad.
  • Girl walking a monkey on a leash.
  • Dog skateboarding through the park. Like hopping off and propelling himself forward. Entrancing.
  • The cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom when we were there, but I wish I could have seen them in their full glory. The trees were on every street, and when they are all blooming together, it must be incredible. As it was, the ones we saw were lovely, and Japanese people were gravitating towards them, taking pictures. We even saw news crews documenting the beginning of the season. 
  • We drank some amazing cocktails at the Park Hyatt, the hotel where Lost in Translation was filmed. The bar on the top floor is called the New York Bar and Grill, and it had an American theme menu. Neither the drinks nor the food interested us. We were there to watch the sun set over Tokyo.
  • Lots of little touristy things like the Meiji Shrine, the Military History museum, the palace gardens.

I am well aware that this is scattered and not at all comprehensive. Er, sorry? So many little things stick out in my memory, like the well-dressed cab drivers with their white gloves, and writing in my journal next to a pond in one of the palace gardens.

Somehow, I guess, Tokyo can’t really be described.

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Thanks Mariners

27 Apr

Making a wish at SafeCo Field. 2008.

One year ago, life was horrible for me, the worst. I’d had my heart broken. I didn’t know where I was going to live. I didn’t have a job I loved or that I thought would take me anywhere. I was living in a lonely city with few people to turn to. I thought I might have breast cancer. I couldn’t eat. I was broke.

With all my problems weighing heavily on me, it made the little things so much worse. An ipod dying became a tragedy on top of it all. It might sound silly and a bit obsessive, but the fact that the Mariner’s were a horrible team last year made everything worse. I would try to sleep at night, all my troubles swarming in my head, and after I had catalogued them all for the millionth time, I would also think, “And the Mariner’s can’t win a fucking game!” I needed them, and they were just depressing me further. I even stopped following them. For the first time since leaving Seattle, I didn’t subscribe to mlbtv.com to watch the games. I just didn’t care.

I KNOW. I really lost it. I kind of kept up with the scores and news worthy updates, but I let myself not care for a season.

My life is back now. It’s not perfect, but it is probably the best it has been in years. Some days, I even feel like I have it all. So this year, when baseball season was coming back, I made the conscious decision to throw my weight back into my Mariner’s. Everyone predicted that they would be horrible this year…again. But I didn’t care. I downloaded some necessary apps to my phone, started following some key M’s blogs, and I started watching the games whenever I had a free night.

I’ve been fighting off a cold and a bad mood all week, so I stayed in on a Friday night to have some me-time and to watch the Mariners play the Blue Jays. We won. That’s the gist of it. But something more. Even at the top of the 9th when we were beginning our two-run deficit comeback with a Michael Saunders’ (not even one of our star players) homerun, I thought, “We still might lose this, but this is actually an exciting game.”

Good M’s offensive, good M’s defense, smart moves by the coaches. In the last couple of years, the M’s have been so crippled, so disappointing, the games haven’t even really been worth it. But tonight, home alone on a Friday night, I was really really enjoying this game.

Then at the top of the 10th, Michael Saunders (again, not even that great a player) got a Grand Slam that basically clinched the game at 9-5.

“SAUNDERS?” I said aloud to myself. “Saunders?!?!” My computer had been on the fritz, and it was freezing, so I thought maybe I saw it wrong. Then the ding-a-ling score alert went off on my phone, and I knew it was true. I was on cloud nine.

The M’s are playing surprisingly well this year. Granted it is April, and they still have room in the season to have a 14 game losing streak. But right now, things are fantastic. So goes baseball. So goes life.

Those that aren’t sports fans have a hard time understanding the utter devotion someone can put behind a team. It’s like everything worthwhile in life. Sometimes you are disappointed. Sometimes you don’t know if it is worth the effort. But when it’s good, it’s great.

The M’s have made me happy lately, and I’m so glad I didn’t break up with them a year ago when things were rough. While one year later, my life is back on track, I’ve had a rough week or two, and it’s like the M’s showed up at my door with soup, ice cream, and flowers.

Being a baseball fan is worth it. It’s worth the hours you spend in front of your television screaming at umpires, or your catcher, or your team’s manager. It’s worth the obsessive thinking about stats and lineups and injuries.

It’s nights like tonight that I realize just how much I love baseball.

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