Jaysis. The war, the constitutional shenanigans, the attorney firings, the daily doses of anti-gay crap flung from the right--all these chap my ass, as you may have noticed. What has me near the snapping point this week? The mundane minutiae of middle class semi-urban motherhood. Which no amount of biking down to Epic Cafe for a cup of hipster coffee while posing as a too-cool happenin' dyke can dilute.
The boy sustained a knee injury in a soccer game back at the end of April, finally diagnosed as a bone bruise only this week after prodding by a couple of docs, x-rays, and an MRI. We were initially looking at an ACL tear, which would have sucked major, major ass, so this was good news. It still means excruciating pain, however--the periosteum around the entire lateral epicondyle was crushed, resulting in pooling blood in the joint--so I have to drag him through rehab stints on a stationary bike and in the weight room. I've been in that position myself three times before, twice recovering from having each meniscus scoped and once from a dandy bone bruise of my own, so I fully understand the difficulty of working through sharp pain and, worse, disconcerting catches, pops, and cracks as scar tissue breaks up and muscles that had the temerity to atrophy in only a week or two are coaxed back into stretching and working.
Naturally, tryouts for next season happened last week, so he watched from the sideline. I have known the coach for a couple of years and got his assurance that the boy would get to stay with the team, and despite this man never having given me reason to doubt his word, I will still not be able to relax until I see the boy out there at full speed, playing time uncompromised. Oh, I'm not a psycho soccer parent who is convinced the sun rises and sets in her kid's cleats. You'll rarely hear me say anything at a game other than woohoo. The boy is a solid middle-of-the-pack player on an upper level team. He isn't superstar material and has never been interested in being one, preferring a low-key approach of playing, contributing, taking out the occasional shit-talking opponent, and having fun doing it. I have seen too many kids in youth soccer get screwed out of something they enjoy, though, either by unscrupulous coaches or hard-luck injuries that set them back into more catch-up time than the team is willing to accomodate. I simply don't want my son to be one of those kids who has to stop playing before he wants to, and I want his knee to stop hurting him now.
The boy is fine through it all, of course. If there's a gene for rolling with the flow, he must have inherited it from my maternal grandfather. I'm still waiting for that particular protein switch to get thrown to the "on" position in my own DNA. God forbid anything really bad ever happens to him; watching and pushing him through this painful process rips at me. How the parents of boys coming home from Iraq missing entire parts of their bodies keep a happy face on for their sons is beyond me.
So with that little dose of perspective, which truly should be enough to keep from complaining about anything again ever ever ever, I acknowledge that my personal shit really doesn't merit a blip on the radar of the universe. Be that as it may, my shit is still my own. It's finals week at the boy's high school, so the daily schedule is completely out the window, meaning I've only gotten to the gym twice, and when I'm there I can't do as much lifting as I would like because my twice-partially-separated shoulder has decided to celebrate its looming 40th birthday with full-blown arthritis, which does actually hurt as much as the Celebrex commercials say, and the girlfriend's daughter graduates this weekend, meaning 50+ people are descending on the house Saturday night, which will be fun, but where are all the fucking folding chairs and where did all this dog shit come from, and oh yeah, I'm spending June in Chicago, which means I have exactly two weeks to finish work projects that are due while I'm gone and two weeks to... save money for the trip? Shite.
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