Been Busy...

Sorry for the sudden lack of posting. Family is in for the holidays - Vanessa's mother paid a surprise visit. (Keep an eye on your wallets.) My mom & dad decided to spend as much time at our house as possible to compete with the rival grandparent. Meanwhile, both Julia and Grace have taken advantage of all the attention by NOT being at home much at all. No school this week, so the last thing a couple of teens want to do is hang out at a household of people fighting over how many Christmas cookies should be allocated to each guest.

I visited with the team shrink yesterday and, funny thing, he made me sign a non-disclosure agreement before we spoke. In other words, he knows about my blog and is nervous I'll reveal his trade secrets to keeping me sane. So what happens between him and me (or is it he and I?) will have to cut out my new doctor. For example:

Doctor -
Me - Well, it all started when my father, "Red" Scott - you may have heard of him - forced me to spend Father's Day 1977 with my mother while he pitched a third of an inning in Cincinnati and gave up 7 runs on 5 hits, 2 walks and a hit batsman.
Doctor -
Me - You think so?
Doctor -
Me - I never thought of it that way. You're brilliant.
Doctor -
Me - You must write a book about this.

And so on. Not very interesting if you don't hear his advice, which is a cross between Dr. Phil, John Gray and Yanni. Still, we meet again next week. He claims I'll heal faster by talking to him. I told him it's my arm that's the problem, not my head. He laughed and showed me the door. Guess who thinks I'm nuts.

The next three nights are busy with Vanessa and me fulfilling charitable obligations. That means I'm being honored for something. In exchange for my appearance, the respective charity gets to charge people to sit and listen to Vanessa and I banter like Abbott & Costello. Yes, I'm the fat one. But we have the act down pretty good. She talks about something serious. I come on and talk about throwing a ball really fast, then she comes up and disputes everything I've ever said as "sweet nothings." I call her my "sweet little nothing" and then we go on from there. Very funny if you've paid $500 to eat cold, fatty steak and room temperature gazpacho.

We go back to church on Sunday. This is Vanessa's new thing. The family that goes to church together does other things together. She hasn't specified what those other things are. I know it won't be easy to get Julia and Grace out of bed on a weekend before 11:00. Ah, the secret lives of teens.

Andy is back today, so our rehab will be a Thursday, Friday, Saturday schedule, off on Sunday (Andy wants to go to church with us and sing in the choir), only a two-a-day on Monday (New Year's Eve), Tuesday off, then 6 days a week, three times a day through spring training. My wrist is still sore, but it'll get better in a couple more weeks. In the meantime, I'm getting my legs strong, my tummy thin, and my head in the game.

Dinner tonight with the family. Vanessa's ordering in Chinese. It'll be fun watching the grandparents argue over who gets to sit next to the twins while Julia and Grace don't show up to go see Charlie Wilson's War. I think they think it's a Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts romantic comedy. Maybe one day they'll learn to read movie reviews before going out to see a movie about the mujadeen.