The ball is NOT SOFT!!
In keeping with the new Van-Halen-life-simplification movement I'm trying to start, I have come to a resolution:
I don't need to keep trying to be good at softball.
This could be applied to most sports in general (in fact, it has already been applied to anything involving a Frisbee) but I'm not quite that far along in the movement yet. I'm taking "Jump" baby steps.
There was a softball tourney last weekend for charity that I signed up for, supporting my friends and stating outright that I hadn't played anything involving a bat and glove since approximately 1992. I don't think they heard me. I went to one practice before our 7 games and was so mystified by the whole glove concept (they make your hand ENORMOUS and yet I still had trouble catching things) and the rules of the game (still don't understand 'em) that their placement of me at second base threatened to blow my tiny little mind. Because, from what I understand, the second baseman is supposed to catch things. I don't know what they're supposed to do with them once caught.
The day of the tourney came, and after one game of me shrieking and ducking when the ball came at my head (I'm not a girlie-girl, I just really don't appreciate very hard things coming at my head. Also, the first hit I tried to catch nailed me in the boob HARD so I became slightly unwilling to catch the fast ones after that.), my teammates relocated me to the catcher position. Remember, please, that I cannot catch. With bare hands, yes, but with my glove-of-mysteries, no.
It was a long 7 games.
The nice thing is that with my designer-y hand/eye coordination, I can hit very well. That almost saved my softball reputation, except that I constantly manage to hit only straight back to the pitcher or directly to the first baseman. Lots of outs. I got on base twice (did I mention there were 7 games?) but never scored.
Softball now joins the ranks of "Things I Do Not Need To Be Good At", which includes (besides frisbee): the pottery wheel, the Hustle, long division, long jumping, pronouncing "statistics" (though over the weekend I discovered I can do it while affecting a Sean Connery accent - who knew?), knitting, and small talk.
On a less creepy note...
This weekend I was at my kickin' Yamaha keyboard trying to transcribe the synthesizer part from Van Halen's "Jump" (from memory) and something just wasn't going right. Then I suddenly realized that I was trying to make it a three-part harmony when in reality it was a TWO part harmony and that if I just left out the middle note, it all came together perfectly.
I think we can all learn something from this.
Not sure what, but something.
Carry on.
LOL
"my e-mail is seattle13incher@yahoo.com i check myspace ebery month so e-mail me. i jsut want to meet a girl for anything. i am a freak but like girls to show me the way. i 16 i hope you like teenagers. i lke older women cause of the experirnce. i will do what ever you say i promise."
When did the cops start targeting my demographic for underage sex predator busts? I feel dirty. And yes, I'm leaving his e-mail up for the world to use and abuse because if he is indeed 16 and sending mail like this, I consider any rude responses he gets from my friends as part of his education.
Two interesting encounters
Anna had a bad Friday.
She took a ferry from her small town across the sound to the big city of Seattle for three job interviews, none of which paid off. To make herself forget, she decided to grab a beer at an Irish pub near the ferry terminal. The sight of an attractive woman alone with her alcohol did what it always does, and soon Anna was joined by a number of creeps. The standout was a thin, sullen man in a hoodie with a dark cap and coke-bottle glasses. He told Anna that he knew her before he met her, and then followed her from bar to bar and pretended not to hear her firmly tell him repeatedly that she wasn't interested in his company.
When Anna got to Marcus' Martini Heaven, she was near desperate. She saw a man at the bar who looked somewhat normal and grabbed his arm, begging him to pretend he was her brother and protect her from what was quickly becoming a stalker. He agreed, but when she went to the restroom she overheard him brag to his friends, "Just watch, I'm going to bring that bitch home."
Then Emily and I entered the bar. As rescuers, we were a pretty poor sight. We'd gone to a Moroccan restaurant earlier in the night and I'd polished off a bottle of wine while M tried to digest the vodka and chambord she'd just drank. Then we went to Brasa and had two more strong martinis apiece (with some birthday cake). By the time we staggered over to Marcus', our clothes were hanging crooked and I had a perma-lean on my 3-inch heels. As soon as we stumbled down the stairs (laughing the entire way), I headed for the bathroom and M headed for the bar. Anna met her there.
When I got back from my 10th pee of the night (I can hold my drink, but I leak like a faucet) I found them at a booth and quickly got caught up with the situation. The stalker approached us and asked if he could join our group. Anna's eyes went huge and I said a brisk "No thank you" while M added "It's a girl's night out type of thing, sorry." Then we ignored him and Anna crumpled against the wall. Then we decided Anna needed to drink more, and got another round of martinis. I decided it would be a great idea for me to confront the guy who had just called Anna a bitch, but by the time I had him somewhat cornered in the bathroom to deliver my diatribe (contenders were: "Hey, is your shoe untied?" and then kick him in the head, or "You should be honest with your assholery, you asshole, and not let women think that you're actually not such as assey asshole. Hole."), I was so tipsy that he slid by me with me able to give nothing stronger than some stink-eye and a wobbly kick in his direction. Probably for the best, as he was kind of big.
(There is a part in here where M got us all tequila shots and I drank mine only to throw it back up on the table, but I am omitting it for the sake of my damaged drinking queen pride)
(d'oh)
We decided that Anna was too cute and too drunk to be alone and therefore took her to my house so we could all sleep it off. After Anna and M both threw up (shower, and outside the car, respectively) they showered and we all crashed. Then in the morning I took her back to the ferry and tried to quickly sober up so that I could resume my life as the Responsible Activity Leader and organize everyone for our afternoon scuba dive.
(d'oh d'oh)
Encounter #2Drunk middle-aged lady (DMAL) had a bad Saturday.
At least, I'm pretty sure she did. She staggered up to my dive buddy and I (dive buddy = Non-drunk middle-aged crazy lady, or NDMACL) and sat down hard next to us, resplendent in her stonewashed jeans and extra-long french manicure. Her hair was peroxide and wispy, and her face was orange. She started into a monologue about how she was 46, and she didn't want anyone to tell her what to do anymore, and that she saw us from a bar across the way (there is no bar anywhere nearby) and that she thinks we RULE because hell, we're doing what we want to do and damnit she wants a HORSE and *mumble mumble* and all the people at the Madison QFC are just the nicest cause when she lost her car, the professor offered her a ride at any time and she's going to call him right now.
The NDMACL started up her own simultaneous monologue about how she's 56 and how she didn't start diving until she was 40-something oh wait that was 49 so she was almost 50 but that she only did a couple dives a year for the first five years in September and October and that only recently did she start diving once a month with my group and that she really liked having people to dive with because it makes her pictures more interesting and she likes going to places she's never heard of, because she's seen Hoodsport a million times, I mean she's gone to Octopus Hole a million times and even though that's the place where my group went last and she didn't seem to recognize anything it's okay that we went there again but she wants to see something NEW and she can't believe that in the previous dive there was an octopus that almost climbed on her head and she didn't even see it.
I tried not to laugh.
There WAS an octopus that almost climbed on her head, because she was laying in a bed of kelp trying to get a picture of the starfish directly besides the octopus and she was threatening to squash it. I pulled her up and pointed to the octo, and she nodded but apparently she just nods whenever I point.
She also turned off my air before our second dive. I asked her to check my tank, since I couldn't remember if I'd turned the valve all the way, and she turned it completely off and told me it was fine. Didn't take me long to discover that it really wasn't all that fine.
But anyways, after her monologue had died down and she's asked both the NDMACL and I for business cards (we were sitting there in wetsuits, so we had to unfortunately say we weren't carrying business cards at the moment), the DMAL stood up again and stilt-walked over to the street, where there was a man waiting in a car, and they drove off together.
Into the sunset.
I have no idea what to make of that.
Central District to Central America
Day 1: "Fishies! Reefs! Holy crap!"
Day 2: "Colorful fishies! Really big reefs!"
Day 3: "I like the blue ones over there! No wait, that yellow one!"
Day 4: "Eels in the reef! Woo! Shark under the reef! Woo hoo!"
Day 5: "I really am not fond of these grey fishies! But hey, a seahorse!"
Day 6: "Aren't coral reefs usually more colorful in pictures I've seen? Why is this one olive and tan-colored?"
Day 7: "That grey bastard fish just tried to bite me, and that sponge kinda looks like a butt."
Three dives a day for a week kind of messes with you, I've discovered. In addition to making the entire world sway and dip like a boat at sea (caused, coincidentally, by spending 6+ hours a day on a boat at sea), the constant compressing and decompressing of your bodily pieces leaves you feeling a little like a squeezebox that's been played all night long. Still, I'd do it again in a heartbeat! Roatan is lovely, and the people put up with us remarkably well. By "us" I'm referring to the honkies in general, since Ben and I spent much of our time there apologizing for the other (mostly middle-aged, male, white, testosterone-infused) divers (also more than likely compensating for other inadequacies with their high-tech dive gear and constant bragging) that treated the staff horribly. Either they refused to lift a finger to help, or they over-chummed it up and tried to get the boat captains to race each other into harbor. Boats loaded with tanks of compressed air and tourists that were one wave away from seasickness or falling completely over (onto the tanks of compressed air, of course).
There were a few other women divers, I have to add. A couple of teenagers who were diving with their dad and some older overtanned, fake-boobed women who dove with their husbands and held their hands the entire dive while kicking delicately along. The teenagers rocketed up and down through the water and did their very best to kick everyone in the head. Gotta love em (or point them in the direction where you last saw sharks).
We left Roatan after our week and went to the mainland of the Honduras, set on getting a more accurate view of the local environment. That meant heading straight into the jungle and not stopping until there was no internet, no air conditioning, no cell reception, and no power lines. Luckily there were still flush toilets. I like flush toilets. The Jungle River Lodge was our second gorgeous home away from home, though this one highly encouraged us to sleep with sheets up over our heads despite the heat and DEET covering us 24/7 (HELLO, jungle bugs!). It overhangs the rocky banks of the Rio General and is next door to the Pico Bonito National Park, so of course we worked in some hiking and a nice little zip line excursion into the jungle. "Canopy Tour", they call it. Sounds like something that would include a break for tea and sauntering, yes? Not like something that requires a helmet, two locking carabiners, a pulley wheel that keeps you from falling into oblivion, a thick leather glove as your only brake, and trees so dense that you slap leaves as you fly past the trunks mere inches from your head. Loved it, needless to say. Apparently have no sense of fear (except when it comes to dating).
They lit the entire place up with candles in the evenings, with a path of flickering light from the main dining room/bar (ohhh, Honduran rum! That's a whole 'nother world, out there.) to the rooms. I spent my entire last day out there just sitting, moving from the hammock to the river's edge to the lodge's balcony and back to the hammock. Thinking of life, and stuff. Sometimes I think that the entire reason that I love travel so much is that it immediately gives a sense of perspective and simultaneously makes you appreciate different lifestyles/environments and makes you appreciate your own all the more.
And then we went home and I gave my parents and pups big hugs, and heard all about how Monkey got to ride in a convertible and Rooster took a self-guided tour of the nearby forest. And then I saw my new niece, who is the cutest lil' chubby raisin ever, and now I'm here.
But my brain is still mostly here:
