Let Me Entertain You With My Awkwardness Part ???

 I think it's only Part 2, technically, because I keep meaning to make it a series but haven't yet. 

So I mentioned that last week I took Eve's friend Davis for her fourth Covid vax shot because she has a tendency to faint and her mom, my friend Jody (HI JODY) is doing a very demanding very terrible training course at work and couldn't get away. The week before, Eve and I had gone for the same shot.

For our first couple of shots, I was pretty anxious about making sure we got there on time and did everything correctly and didn't do anything to mess up our chances of getting the vaccine that we really, really wanted, because we were a bit more naive about what the vaccine actually meant in terms of what life would look like afterward. I have no regrets about getting it, I'm just a bit more clear-eyed about the fact that we can't vaccinate our way out of this pandemic. By our third shot, I ran a bunch of errands with Eve beforehand and Matt and I showed up just on time and out of breath, after he took the time to change his t-shirt which he realized read "Killin' It" just before we left.

Our first booster shot was in December, which is quite a few months away now, and I was a bit anxious again (I also started an antidepressant booster medication (wow I'm saying 'booster' a lot in this post, or maybe just this sentence) which can temporarily increase anxiety). We left with lots of time, and picked up a giant pack of Timbits to give to the staff, because I appreciate what they do so much and always mean to do something like this but usually forget or chicken out.

(TMI alert): I always go pee before we leave to drive somewhere. Today I went twice, and by the time we got to the school, only about fifteen minutes away, I had to go again - like I said, anxious. I was annoyed but I figured I would just find the bathroom when we got inside. There was no line, though, so we walked right in, dispensed our Gratitude Donut Holes (they were very well received), and walked in to get our shots.

We had the loveliest nurse, who complimented my Sandbanks tan and gave Eve the last fun band-aid even though she's nineteen. When we were done, of course we had to wait the fifteen minutes to make sure we didn't faint or have a reaction. I should not have forgotten this, but I had. I left my daughter and my purse on the chair and went to find a bathroom.

After I had gone and returned to the gym and waited with Eve and we left, I burst out laughing as we were exiting the school. Eve asked me what the hell was going on and when I could breathe again I explained that every other time we had gotten our shots, when we were leaving we had to show our paper with our departure time at multiple checkpoints to make sure we weren't leaving early.

This time no one asked us anything and we walked right out. Which means that me telling every single person I encountered in the hallway "I'm just going to the bathroom!" was unnecessary at best, and aggressive oversharing at worst.

Eve said "oh great. You've gone from being the wonderful lady who brought all the Timbits to the weird lady who told everyone she was going to pee".

Heyyyyyy

I mean, I only blog once a week at most anyway. That means I've only missed, what - three posts? Four? I could miss that many meals and not die. I could forget to water my plants that many times and they'd recover. I could skip that many pills - wait, could I? I'd be snotty, and maybe have heartburn, and get restless legs, but I wouldn't die, or (even worse) get pregnant. It's NOT A BIG DEAL.

The happy news is that I haven't been not-blogging because I'm depressed, but because my funny adorable damned children and super hilarious stupid friends have been keeping me busy with summer fun. We went to Bluesfest! We went downtown to the market! We shopped in quirky little stores! We had gelato! We sat on patios! We drank wine in back yards! We coached baseball! (okay, not 'we' so much as 'Angus', but I'm doing a thing here). We read books outside! We built fences! (okay, not 'we' so much as 'Matt', and I'm starting to feel like I got the best of the summer deal). We did backyard beer tastings and sang backyard horrible karaoke! We chased spectacular sunsets! We went camping! 

Then summer lovin' came to a rude end (sort of) when Angus left for Ithaca on Monday, his little car stuffed to the veritable gills. He sent us videos of where he's living - they're called Circle Apartments, and they're in a ring around a community building with a gym and laundry. He has two roommates, and they all have lockable doors with a common living area and kitchen. It looks like a good set-up. He changed the family group chat name to 'Angus's grocery club' and included us all on his first trip for groceries as a kitchen-having self-feeding grown-ass man (Elmira College requires all students to live in residence and have a meal plan for all four years, which made sense when he had school as well as baseball). He took a really great cooking class in high school and last year when he was in residence alone on a break I talked him through making chicken fingers from scratch, so he'll do fine, but I'm fine with him asking questions because I remember how hard it was learning how to meal plan and figure out what to buy and how much.

Eve has almost two weeks left, a few precious days of which she is currently spending recovering from having four wisdom teeth extracted. Yesterday the first few hours post-procedure were pretty miserable, both from a pain perspective and because we both get pretty severe dental appointment anxiety and I think the adrenaline withdrawal was nasty. She started taking the prescribed painkillers and ate a little and has improved quickly.

Today I took Eve's friend Davis for her second Covid booster because her mom was on a work course and couldn't get away and Davis is a fainter. The nurse could not have been lovelier and they had little curtained areas where Davis could lie down for the shot and the fifteen-minute wait after, and the nurse just hung out and chatted with us. She mentioned that actually with Davis's low blood pressure some salt would not be a bad idea along with fluids, and on the way home Eve texted and said she thought she could handle some McDonald's fries, so we took that as a message from the universe and did french fries all around. 

So I've been thinking a little bit about whether I want to keep blogging, and how. I sometimes don't blog because I don't feel like I have an organized post with an over-arching theme, or I don't have time to load pictures first, or I didn't do anything terrible interesting that week, along with the ever-present reasons of laziness and inertia. I'm thinking I might sometimes just post a bit of stream-of-consciousness about stuff I'm trying to work out in my head. So if that happens, just rest assured that I haven't had a stroke (probably), I'm just trying something. (After I got Covid, people kept asking if I had Covid brain. I would usually say "yes, by which I mean I have the same brain as before but now I blame Covid for it"). 

Now I can go catch up on all your blogs without feeling guilty. I leave you with a picture of Lucy in my neighbour's yard, being The Most Interesting Dog in the World.

Sorry For Being a Boob that was Unclear About My Boob

 Whoever was "a wee bit fretful" on my boob's behalf, I adore you and I apologize for my superstitious fear that if I said unequivocally "I do NOT have breast cancer", cancer would drop out of the ceiling and punish my hubris. My doctor did, in fact, say "everything's fine", and I had been on such a sine wave of absolute denial and abject terror (for something that millions of women go through every day), I wasn't even sure how to feel. 

No, that's dumb, I feel good. It's the summertime, my children are home, my best friend was just here for Bluesfest, we found a perfect desk for Eve at IKEA yesterday and my mom bought it, my dad is feeling better, and I yesterday I made TWO phone calls I'd been dreading and got two annoying things crossed off my list. Local corn is out, and I just made a really good turkey sandwich.

Pat, you live next to Hamilton? For some reason I thought you lived near Nicole - probably because I first saw you commenting on her blog, and as we all know, that's how geography works, right? It was the Tiny Shop Bakery at Hanes Corn Maze that we went to, and everything we got was fantastic. Matt and Eve are headed back to Hamilton (the city) this week-end to take delivery of her bed and put the second coat of paint on her room. 

I bought the bed when we were down the last time, and the staff at Sleep Country in Ancaster were so lovely and helpful and found us the perfect bed and assured me that we could buy it and schedule the delivery later (because we weren't sure when Matt and Eve would be coming back). So I bought it and had to pick an arbitrary day for delivery which they said I could change later, and then immediately started worrying that they were just shining me on and when I tried to change the delivery it would be an issue. And then when I called back to change the delivery they called me back within five minutes, changed everything and sent me an email with the updated delivery date immediately. Now that I'm talking about it, I need to go leave them a great review online and send a thank-you note. I am so pleasantly surprised and delighted with the whole experience. Or maybe I should wait until they actually deliver the correct thing? Oh Lord, now I'm worried I've jinxed myself. If I've ever said I'm not a superstitious person don't believe me, clearly I'm seconds away from throwing chicken bones and reading tea leaves.

Photo dump from our last visit to Hamilton (the city). Eve worked her butt off building her Target bedside table and painting. The colour it was wasn't terrible, but it literally looked like someone had walked on the walls. We went to the nearby Canadian Tire and got some paint, then went to look for a hammer because we had realized we had everything but. We ended up finding the same employee who had sold us the paint in front of a glass case of hammers that was locked (are hammers a big theft risk?) and a bit intimidating - there were a lot of them, and they were mostly really expensive. When we told him we needed a hammer he said "are you doing carpentry, or putting together IKEA furniture?" Eve told him kudos for not making assumptions, but she was literally in the midst of putting together IKEA (Target) furniture, and he sold her the tiniest most adorable and very affordable hammer (with a surprising amount of heft to it) that was exactly what she needed.

And while we're on the subject of Hamilton, and in reply to Steph's comment, on Sunday we SAW Hamilton (the musical) - twice postponed, we didn't really believe it was going to happen until the music started. I think I said last year that after listening to the soundtrack a million times and getting to see the movie of the Broadway version that maybe I was okay if I didn't get to see the real thing. Eve said "that's dumb", and she was correct. It was wonderful. Eve and I had a subscription to Broadway Across Canada that year so we had our regular seats pretty far up in the orchestra section. We had bought another pair for Matt and someone else, still in the orchestra section but a few rows back. We ended up taking Eve's friend Jackson. I asked if she was going to sit with him and she snorted and said "uh, no, I'm sitting in the good seat". All's fair in love and theatre, I guess.

Then we went home and picked up another friend and went to the grocery store to get snacks before Drag Race. So the vibe for the whole day was artistic, you might say.

Oh Hey

 I just remembered that I have at least one of the esteemed-and-beloved Nicole's blog posts to read and comment on, possibly more, which reminded me that I usually make myself blog before I read other people's blogs as my reward, which reminded me that oops, it's definitely been a while since I blogged, so I checked and... oof, nearly a month, what the heck? 

I think what happened is I kind of got in the habit of blogging on Thursdays (Nicole blogs on Mondays, her cheerful, lovely way of greeting the week, which is so fitting, and me blogging on Thursday as I crawl to the end of it, covered in bagel crumbs and bits of book tape, is also kind of appropriate), either in a Surly way or otherwise. Then the last two weeks of school got a little nutty, as they are susceptible to being, and then it was the summer which means I lose track entirely of what day it is. And also there's the probable-ADD thing, and my ever-prone-to-going walkabout memory, and, well, here we are on - *peers around for a calendar* - July 6th.

Hey, remember my sort-of-long-drawn-out boob-related saga? The whole thing was delayed by the tornado-ish weather event, and then finally my doctor's receptionist called and said we needed to make an appointment for her to give my results, and it was on my birthday, but it could be a phone appointment. Which led me to think that it must be good news, because what kind of monster would make a phone appointment to tell someone they have breast cancer on their birthday? And my doctor is decidedly not a monster. I literally read on Twitter about someone who found out they had cancer on their birthday just before the appointment, and if this was before Covid a phone appointment wouldn't have even been a thing, so that saved me a bit of spiraling. My doctor is also going on maternity leave again, which is one of those good news/bad news things (how wonderful! But shit! It's hard for doctors to take maternity leave, so good for you! But crap, I hate having to go to a different doctor! Did I mention I think I have ADD, and I've been working on addressing a long list of things since I turned fifty, and now she's leaving just as I was about to get to this one? Oh well, the last locum she had was really good, hopefully the new one will be too). 

Eve and I had a fantastic few days in Hamilton (not at Hamilton, which my friend Steph says she always thinks when I mention Hamilton, which is entirely fair, and in fact this Sunday we are going to SEE Hamilton, not visit Hamilton, so the confusion will be even more justified). We scoped out her room in her student house for next year, met two of the six other girls she'll be living with, dropped off stuff from home, picked up stuff we had left in Matt's brother's garage, visited our professor and her daughter and grandkids, I visited my brother in law and his lovely wife and children while Eve hung out with some university friends, and Eve did some work on her room while I ran errands. 

Friday morning before we headed to the house we went on an adventure to find a little bakery I had scoped out because my professor's daughter loves pie and we thought it would be nice to pick some up for dinner that night. It was a beautiful drive sort of out in the country, and at one point the next GPS direction was "take highway 52 to Copetown". I thought this would make a fantastic insult, and it is one of my enduring regrets that I didn't instruct Eve to get her camera out in time to get a picture of the sign so I could Tweet it back to racists and transphobes on Twitter who get a hair up their ass about other people being accorded basic human rights. "Pronouns chapping your butt? Try taking the Highway 52 to Copetown". (It's good that I amuse myself, right?)

When we got to the bakery I was backing into a parking spot and I spotted the guy parking beside me and thought he looked a little scary - I'm not sure I can articulate why. He was sort of thickset and hairy and looked a little glowery? Anyway, it was nothing but a passing subconscious observation. We got into the bakery and I heard him describing things to his companion and immediately revised my earlier estimation because he was sweet and earnest and possibly gay and lovely. After we bought our stuff and were leaving, he was also returning to his car and Eve said "I saw that guy and thought he was kind of menacing and then he was so cute - he said 'oh no, they're out of raspberry? Son of a BEEhive'", and then I burst out laughing because what are the odds we were thinking the same exact thing? Well, quite high actually, but funny that one of us said it out loud or we wouldn't have known.

Earlier in the hotel room was one of our other moments of week-end telepathy. I was in the bathroom and I said disconsolately, "I made sure to get Dad to give me a tape measure so we could see if you have room for a double bed and I put it somewhere and told myself to remember where but I don't." Eve said serenely, "I know where it is". I said something motherly like "shut up, you do not", and she said "Dad opened the little shoebox you put my glasses in and I saw it and thought 'I'd better remember that's where that is because Mom never will'". Hmph, but also, thank goodness.

Well crap, this is easy, why did I stop? Do you ever stop blogging and then can't figure out what you're supposed to blog about anymore? How am I? Well who cares, that's self-centered. But wait, it's my blog, it makes sense to blog about how I am. World events? Buggerfuck, that way lies madness. 

I should post some pictures. I'll do that tomorrow. Or Thursday. Wait, tomorrow IS Thursday? Sigh. How are you? It's my blog, I'm allowed to ask. 

Some Kind of Thursday

 It's Thursday again. I am not surly today. Neither am I serene. On the May long week-end (Canadian), Ottawa was hit by a derecho, a term I had never heard before and would happily never hear again. Defined as "a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds", it was an extremely violent and destructive event that took down a ton of trees, caused a lot of property damage and had some people powerless for ten days. We got off pretty easy, which we appreciated extra because we were sick with Covid at the time. 

For the last couple of days the environmental news was full of dire forecasts for today, including a tornado watch. I think we all have a touch of PTSD, and I think this precipitated a small-scale but significant mental health crisis for me. I knew rationally that it was better for us to know, that we should just do what we could to prepare and then let the funnel clouds fall where they may, but I was extremely anxious and on-edge all day. As it happened, we got nothing but a heavy downpour and some thunder and lightning both at school and at my house. I'm grateful for this, of course, but also exhausted and kind of weepy.

Eve and I are going to Hamilton tomorrow to spend the week-end visiting friends, including my/her professor and her daughter and grandkids and some of Eve's classmates, and bringing some stuff to her house for next year and starting to fix up her room. Matt is going Mexico for work on Saturday for the week. Angus left on Tuesday for a baseball trip with six college friends, culminating in a night in the house where they filmed Field of Dreams, which was one of his friends' grad gift. It's all good, but a lot of moving parts, and my covid-recovering brain is slow-moving and I think that just added to the anxiety, trying to remember where all of my family members are and are going to be. In one funny-very-nearly-not-funny turn of events, Matt was packing the car for us and opened the center console and found all of our passports still in it from when we went down to Angus's graduation. Eve and I separately heard him say this and went "yeah? So? OH MY GOD", realizing we were about to blithely drive off tomorrow with the passport he needs to fly to Mexico the day after. Whew.

And oh yeah, Angus graduated! We were extremely happy, of course, that there was going to be a graduation and that we could get across the border for it, but we were still recovering and not quite sure how everything was going to go. It was a really fun week-end. Everyone else in residence had moved out the week before and the previous week had been nothing but senior activities, many involving alcohol. Friday night was a booze cruise and then a party at a house one of the baseball parents had rented.  Saturday Angus showed up at the hotel to have lunch with us, walked out the door and started to cross the parking lot to the Red Robin and then realized he was too hungover. We found this absolutely hilarious and gave him our room key so he could go have a nap instead. I did take a picture of his shame, though.

If he hadn't been on the baseball team we probably would have kind of been at loose ends, so in this case the baseball relationships were a really nice thing to have. Someone's parents were staying at an AirBnB above a restaurant that had an outdoor area and a little garage-type party room, so we gathered there in the afternoon. Angus was recovered, but his friend whose parents had flown in from California was down for the count until after dinner. They had all missed rehearsal, so we told them to find someone who had been sober to follow the next day. Angus said he wasn't going to drink anymore, but then somehow everyone ended up doing homemade limoncello shots.

We got one final picture with Angus and Jack, who we called Fake Angus for the first two years because they were the only two freshmen with full beards and when their hair was the same length they were indistinguishable on the baseball diamond - we had to tell my mom to stop waving at Jack multiple times. 

Everyone made it to commencement on time, and the ceremony was lovely. It was outside in a gorgeous space that was too sunny for any amount of sunscreen we could slather on our pasty Canadian skins. Eve got a major tan/burn line quite high on her chest that has hampered her ability to wear low-cut tops since, leading her to profess than she "should have dressed sluttier at Angus's grad".

all the baseball players who came in as freshmen together

Angus had to move out of his room right after grad - we went up and grabbed a few things to put in our car, and a couple of high school friends who had driven down to see him graduate helped him load the rest into his car.

I still think that Covid made the middle two years of his four-year experience sort of squish together so it feels faster than it would have otherwise, but I realize it probably would have seemed fast anyway. On the whole, he had a really good experience and I think he grew a lot. 

I don't want to end on a schmaltzy note, so enjoy this picture taken right after Lucy, who had also been nervous about the weather all day, took a massive leap onto Eve, who was both impressed by the acrobatics and unimpressed by the result.

Surly Thursday

It's been a while since I had a full head of surliness to vent on the appropriate day. None of it is really that bad, and none of it is really personal, and mostly I think I might have been intractably, irredeemably cranky today anyway.

1. I have a sleep study booked tonight to check whether my CPAP settings need to be adjusted. In a way I'm glad it's happening because it needs to happen. In a way it's one more fucking medical test in a line of the blood pressure-monitoring-mammogram-biopsy-bloodwork train over the last month that makes me think maybe I wouldn't be feeling so mortal right now if I could go a few days in a row without being reminded of all the things that might be about to kill me. Also, I was so proud of myself that when they called to schedule they said 'how about Wednesday night'? and I said I only actually have to be at work two days a week, maybe it could not be the night before one of those days? and they said sure! Thursday night? and I said great! And just as I hung up realized I had agreed to take an office shift at Broadview on Friday, after a night of unsettled interrupted sleep. Dumb.

2. I agreed to take this office shift even thought I've been really enjoying just being a librarian again, and it's at the school that's far from my house, and I haven't done any office shifts there so I won't really know what's going on. The office administrator wanted the afternoon off for her son's high school graduation. She suggested I stop in at some point before the shift so she could give me some pointers. Every time I have, she's been on the phone and too busy, or not there. I emailed her about this. She never got back to me or came up to the library to see me. I'm the one doing her a favour, should I be the one jumping through all the hoops? I don't even know if I have a login for the attendance software. It will be fine, there will be a time after this, I will survive, I'm just annoyed.

3. Working the last month of the school year in the library is an exercise in trying to go with the flow. EQAO happens, immunizations happen, big meetings happen, and this seems to inevitably result in the library bookshelves being moved around in weird ways and groups of people being constantly in the way. I can't reach the shelves I need to reach. The shelves aren't alphabetical anymore so I'm wandering around like an idiot with the same book for way longer than I should be. Compared to being a teacher this is absolutely nothing to complain about that, and I realize that, and I would never complain about it anywhere other than here.

4. While we're on the subject of the teachers, though, ninety percent of them could not be lovelier and I love seeing them when they bring their kids in and I respect and admire their work so much. But there is a small subset of them who think that the librarian is their inferior and that they should be able to set up shop in the library whenever they feel like it, and block the aisles with their little carts and lean on the very shelves on which I am trying to replace the books, and holy fuck, who the fuck does that? 

5. Motherfucker, I actually have to sleep at the hospital tonight. How did I do this last time? Did I bring a fan? I'm definitely going to need a fan. It says arrive with clean, dry, product-free hair. Ha ha ha, bitch, this hair doesn't go anywhere without product. The last time I went they said "we might wake you up to try a machine, but don't worry if we don't, you might still have sleep apnea". Then it took me forever to fall asleep and then they woke me up going JESUS CHRIST your brain is getting zero oxygen, PUT THIS MASK ON. And then it took me forever to fall asleep again because, mask. Presumably it should be a bit better this time, but not that much better because, hospital. Ugggggghhhhhhhhhh.

6. Some guy on Facebook made a gross comment about the little girl play Princess Leia in the new Star Wars series and I said it was gross and he said I looked like John Goodman with a mop on his head. Okay, that doesn't actually make me surly, I can't stop giggling about it. I almost said "thanks, that's what I was going for", but I thought it was better to cut off his oxygen. Still. Of all the ways I've ever been called fat by fuckwads on the internet, that was peak creative. 

Thank-you for indulging my crabbiness. I will endeavour to be more pleasant when next we meet. 

Worry Checklist

 This is going back a couple of weeks because "time's lost all meaning" keeps climbing to new heights. But a couple of weeks ago, a few not-catastrophic but not-awesome things happened in quick succession:

I had a biopsy done on the mass in my breast. The doctor and nurse could not have been lovelier, everything was explained really well and the care was compassionate in the extreme. But I reacted badly to the tape over the gauze, so in addition to massive bruising and a small healing incision I had a couple of really painful lesions on my boob and the whole thing looked like it had been mauled.

My dad has been having a weird pain under his rib cage for going on two months now. He's had x-rays, ultrasounds, bloodwork and one really stupid physiotherapy appointment over the phone (who the fuck thought that was a good idea). The pain was worse again so I took him to my physiotherapist and talked to his doctor about getting him some pain relief, because "I don't want to prescribe anything when I don't know for sure what's causing the pain" is fine for a few days to a week, but at some point it doesn't matter what's causing the pain, you have to prescribe something to address the pain.

Lucy jumped down off of a couch, which she does dozens of times a day, and hurt her knee, which she's done once before, and got very weird and sad and didn't want to eat or be walked.

Matt had to go to Germany for work and we were idiots and weren't careful enough about isolating him when he got home, and he started coughing.

So for the space of a couple of days, I was:

Worried about my boob

Worried about my dad

Worried about my dog

Worried about my husband

And then we had some tornado-force winds blast through town in the middle of the long week-end and some people were powerless for a week or more. The last time this happened we were the last to have power back up, and this time we didn't lose power at all, so I felt extremely grateful, even though my husband gave me Covid while my boob was still healing.

I haven't heard back about the biopsy, likely because the power outage delayed everything. Trying to assume that no news is good news. The doctor doing the biopsy said that when they pulled the samples out the mass got smaller, which means it's probably just a cyst. 

The doctor prescribed a prescription-strength anti-inflammatory for my dad which helped, but because of his kidney function he can't take them long term, which sucks because they really helped. He seems to be getting very slowly better, it's just sort of scary and frustrating that we still don't really know what's going on or how to make sure it keeps moving in the right direction.

Lucy was weird and sad for about a week and we were careful with her and Eve only took her for very short walks, and she seems to be back to normal. Small dogs often do have knee problems, and she had already lost some weight, so there's not a whole lot we can do.

We didn't get as sick with Covid as some have. As long as I didn't do too much I didn't feel that bad, except for a brutal hacking cough, which is something I used to get at least once yearly before I got my CPAP anyway, due to chronically inflamed airways. 

So then I couldn't do anything about anything I was worried about for a few days, and a bunch of people didn't have power, and some major streets are still closed ten days later, and it all felt very surreal and I couldn't go to work so now I have no idea what day it is and I feel more out of step with the world than ever and I don't know if I'll ever feel normal again, but I didn't have to have Covid without lights or air conditioning so... grateful for that.

Before all that, the next thing I was going to blog about was meeting my sister and brother-in-law and niece in Elmira for Seniors Day. 

It wasn't a picture-perfect week-end. The university has lost its ball diamond over a dispute with the city and Angus was really upset about the conditions of the one they were playing at. We screwed up the hotel booking so my sister and her people showed up at our hotel room door at eleven p.m. when they arrived for a drink and we weren't there, while we were opening our hotel room door on an empty hallway. But we recovered and had a great day Saturday starting at Cracker Barrel, which my niece absolutely loves. I did get nervous waiting for them that they were walking into some other Cracker Barrel. I texted my niece but she didn't get it until we were all already sitting down:

Angus had a rough go pitching and they lost the first game. He shook it off and the team won the second game, and the Seniors Day ceremony was nice - they gave him an engraved bat and a travel jersey, a framed photo and a really nice card from the coach. 

Between games, Jody and Charlotte and I hit Target for hotel room booze.

Every time we go to Target I reserve the right to buy some junk food that we can't get in Canada. It's often - OFTEN - not very good, but that's really not the point. This time I bought a barrel of Ruffles with LeBron James on it and Lime and Jalapeno and Flamin' Hot Cheddar chips. Matt calls it my "ridiculous buckets of chips" and I am very happy with it.

Then we piled into the van to go over to the college for the team dinner. We brought some pictures from the Little League World Series and had a nice time with Angus, although we finished early because he had to be up at six for the bus to Albany for the next day's games.

Matt and I had gone back and forth on whether to go watch the last games of the season, but it would have been a nine-hour driving day minimum and we were already pretty tired from moving Eve home on Wednesday. We made our obligatory lunch stop at Hairy Tony's in Cortland and then followed the stats for the first game while driving home. They lost pretty badly, and then the stats went dead. We knew they had to win one game and Keuka College had to lose one of their games in order for Elmira to be in the playoffs, so we figured our chances were low. Turns out that in the second game they were down 13-1 and CAME BACK TO WIN, so Angus got his big last-game-pitching victory AND they were in the playoffs

AND Matt went to watch the playoff games and they got their FIRST EVER POST-SEASON WIN and beat St. John Fisher for the first time ever, the team that creamed them four times at Easter

AND Angus got the Sportsman of the Year 

AND the Elmira Booster Club Player of the Year Award at the Athletic Banquet.

So Matt got to see his last Elmira game after all (in which, let's be clear, they got absolutely creamed again, but after the one win it was okay). 

Whew. Writing all that made me feel a little better. Maybe I will have to blog myself normal again. You guys in?