The Power of The Media

I was working out with Andy today when he began to sing. Here I am, ankles tied together with a 24-inch piece of rope, chasing a rooster in a back corner of the YMCA gym, when Andy breaks out into some bluesy number having to do with his sister and no rent and his baby and drinking and ladies and, basically, a total lack of income to support all of these women. I put my cock down and asked him why. Why does he insist on vocalizing every 45 minutes? Is it out of boredom? Is he trying to prove he's a better singer than me? Is it to distract me so I can re-learn how to focus on what's in front of me?

Andy sat down and pet Monique (the rooster). He began to tear up. It is rare that you see a monstrosity of a man who could pass as a middle linebacker for the Giants allow himself to be so emotionally naked. I didn't sit. The ropes were burning one of my Achilles tendons and I tried to get them off of me while Andy spoke.

Andy: I just want to sing.
Me: Do you have something sharp, like a knife?
Andy: That's all I've ever wanted to do.
Me: Or a shard of glass?
Andy: If only I could get people to listen.
Me: Soap could work; maybe I could slip out.

He complained for another 10 minutes before telling me to hit the showers. We were done for the day.

Let me tell you, I felt like a kid in school just let out early by the teacher. Some of Andy's training methods are strange (I don't believe bobbing for apples helps my core as much as he says it does), but they're all hard. When he told me we were stopping two hours early, I jumped up for joy and fell. The ropes were still burning.

The shower room at the Y is a steamy place. Don't take that the wrong way. The water is hot and creates a lot of steam. I like it because the steam can act like a natural camouflage and disguise my binge-laden fatness from anyone else who may decide to soap up. Probably three and a half minutes into my shampoo, it started again. The singing, I mean. Andy was somewhere in the shower with me. The good thing was he didn't try to share the same head. He's so big, I'd have had to rinse the soap from my semi-balding scalp in a toilet bowl.

Andy: My woman don't understand, she don't think I'm no a man.
Me: (clearing my throat, clearly uncomfortable)
Andy: She won't smile for a hundred miles, even though I think she can.
Me: You just stepped on my foot.

In the locker room I sat blow drying my towel. I hate to pack wet things in my duffel bag. Andy sat down next to me. The bench shook for a moment; I think a 7.6 on the Richter scale. He spoke.

Andy: Can you help me?
Me: Yes, your pants don't match your shirt.
Andy: I mean getting me a gig.

I had thought I was Andy's gig. But what he meant was that he really, truly wants to be a singer. For a job. It's in his blood, he said, in his DNA. If you ask me, he does have a good voice and he is an interesting looking dude. But could he make a living at it? And how was I supposed to help him?

Me: How am I supposed to help you?
Andy: Use your influence with the media.
Me: You mean go on ESPN and talk about your vibrato?
Andy: No. Your blog.

So the following is for Andy. This is my influential, media-savvy blog letting the world know I have a personal trainer who really likes working out with me, but would really really love to sing for you. He's free most nights, except Sundays (he's a big Simpsons fan). If you need a voice for your bachelor party or office Christmas party or as a form of communication between you and your girlfriend, then I have the guy for you. He's a very, very large man, so leave enough space in the living room for both he and his voice. And he's great with animals, so no need to lock the dog and cat in the bedroom. He'll work almost for free, but you need to pay him a little bit. I'm getting 15%, and 15% of nothing won't pay my landscapers. We can start at $200 and work up from there.

In the meantime, I'm looking for some scissors or something. I can't seem to get these ropes off of my ankles.

Papered Again

While running early this morning, the paperboy in his '96 Voyager hit me twice, once with a Ledger and once with a Times. The Friday Times, especially thick, grazed my forehead and threw me off stride. Almost slipped off the sidewalk. But I didn't. Because I'm so damn great. He also missed 10 times. Ten for twelve is a damn good batting average.

Lots of debate in the papers about our pitching staff now. I especially liked the picture in the Post with Kai Goto's head on my body and vice versa. I would make a very attractive Japanese man. Kai, however, looked a little out of shape.

Speaking of which, there was an anonymous quote by a "source close to the team" that "internal discussions" were going on about whether I would come back as a starting pitcher or a relief pitcher. Of course, that was one of the hot topics on the radio today as well. And on a football Friday no less. I threw two pitches all last year and can still command Tony for Staten Island to claim I'm not only a bum, but a rich one. Tony - you're right. Where's the problem?

Disconcerting was the amount of toilet paper strewn about my property today. Volleyball season is done. So is high school football season. Thus, "friends" of Julia and Grace would not do this because there's no reason to. Is it a copycat paperer? The worst part was the poor quality of toilet tissue. Last time's two-ply Charmin was replaced with single-ply store brand. So the copycats did more with less quality. Sounds like how my 2008 season's expected to go.

Big workout session with Andy today. He wants me to swim. Vanessa stayed up all night sewing my initials onto my designer life-preserver. I'm not a strong swimmer, so keep your eyes on the headlines. I may show up missing at sea.

8 Weeks

Too snowy and icy to run this morning and too early to go anywhere to work out (Andy, as strong in mind and body as he is, took an oath many years ago to never rise before or during an hour that begins with a 6), I put an old tape into the VHS player and tried that out. It was a workout tape called "8 Minute Abs." I am under no illusion that I can make my abs look like the host's abs in 8 minutes. I'm pushing for 8 weeks. That would be the start of spring training. In Florida. Where's it's not snowy and icy.

The music sounded like it was transferred from a porn film. The two actors working out with the host sported funny hair and clothes. I looked at the box and saw the tape came out in 1991. I hit pause, found a photo album, and looked for a picture of myself from 1991. There I was at Christmas time. I had more hair then. I remember the style was called a "ledge." My barber, Pete, said it was all the rage. I liked it so much that when I went back 8 weeks later to have my head re-ledged, Pete said the rage was over and he wouldn't cut another ledge, unless the rage came back. Now look at me. If the rage came back, I wouldn't have enough hair to be retro-ledged. Quite upsetting.

I finished the abs video and went upstairs. The rest of the house was still asleep. Actually, the occupants were asleep. A house cannot sleep because it is not a living being. Like barbers and 8 minute ab actors. Went into the kitchen and peered into the fridge. There was some good stuff there. Why?

Not only did the team get me a personal trainer, but they got me a personal chef as well.

There, I said it. One person's sole job for the next 8 weeks is to build up my body. Another person's sole job is to feed it. Tomorrow I go to the team psychiatrist. He's not my personal one, however. I'm not afraid to share.

I grabbed an avocado stuffed with ricotta cheese and flipped on the kitchen TV. ESPN was somewhere. The remote was somewhere too, but I couldn't find it, so I had to flip the stations from 2 to 36 by hand. I think it's lazy of TV manufacturers to not build TVs that change channels on verbal command. Why should I have to get off of my stool and reach over to flip a channel. Not fair.

Made it to ESPN and saw two major headlines.

1. KAI GOTO SIGNS $108 MILLION 8-YEAR DEAL WITH NY.
2. NY TRADES FOR KC OUTFIELDER LYMAN GAYE.

Wow. I sleep for 7.28 hours and look what happens. We give the team's second biggest contract of all time to The Jimmy Scott of Japan and then trade for the batter Jimmy Scott - me - was throwing to when his (my) elbow suddenly decided to have an out of arm experience. Overnight, we're a better team. I don't know Lyman very well. I know about his supposed baggage, but the man sure can hit and field. I think he had 20+ home runs last year for the 4th year in a row. And they (scouts, not computer guys) predict Kai to win at least 15 games. (The computer guys say he'll win 14.4 games.)

I swallowed my mouthful of cheese and looked around for someone to share my thoughts with. It was 5:56 AM. The house was as quiet as a mouse, aside from the TV, my clicking jaw, and a hair voluntarily falling out of my head and parachuting to the floor. Good things are starting to happen again. My only wish is that I could share my feelings with someone. We'll see what my personal team psychiatrist says about that tomorrow. He'll hopefully give me some good advice that gets me through the next 8 weeks, or at least lasts longer than my next haircut.

I'm A P-U-S-S-Y

A very sore me was up and running this morning, my feet on the pavement by 5:29. Still dark. Very dark. I need to remember to wear something white or reflective, maybe a miners helmet. My local paperboy, driving around his '98 Voyager, nearly hit me four times with newspapers. But, one excruciatingly long day of working out with my new very, very large African-American personal trainer, Andy, has loosened me up. The first paper, a heavy (since it's Wednesday) NY Times, shot right past my chest. I was able to pull away before impact. I'm lithe, you know. The second paper, still a NY Times (I can tell by the blue plastic covering), almost got me in the head. I ducked quickly, like a duck sticking his head into a pond for raw fish (would ducks like sushi?). I'm a nimble S.O.B. The third and fourth papers, yellow plastic so I think Star Ledgers, were jumpers. They met my destination on their downward trajectory, so my feet needed to lift off the ground with the quickness of a cat, but not a house cat. More like a wildcat (not the High School Musical kind, either). Like a bobcat. Yes. A bobcat. With the quickness of a mountain bobcat, my feet leaped off of the ground, narrowly avoiding a midair collision with two separate yellow plastic-clad Star Ledgers. I'm speedy. I'm wry. (I don't know what "wry" means.) I am a M-A-N.

I haven't worked out in public for a long time. The gym Andy took me to yesterday was a simple YMCA, although our YMCA was recently remodeled and appeared to have every piece of equipment (including fresh juice bar) known to ever have any positive affect on human biology. People stared, of course. I'm a famous person. I'm not being narcissistic when I say they want to be like me. The reason they want to be like me is because I play baseball, earn a ton of money, own a huge house, and am married to a beautiful woman who, in eighth grade, won the coveted Miss Yell position on her cheerleading squad. However, the number of people who want to be me took a hit yesterday when they saw me at the gym. I no longer have a Superman physique. My hair is thinning to the point that I'm constantly trying to make comb overs with my fingers. And, apparently, I am a pussy. Point number three alone was enough to make some heads shake and some onlookers pray for me. If a stranger looks at you in a public gym and, as a result, pulls out their rosary beads and quietly begins to move their lips while still looking at you, chances are they're thanking their lucky stars they don't have to submit themselves to public ridicule by being called a pussy by a very, very large African-American man who sports a booming voice and 30-inch triceps.

In high school, we'd lift in a former music room across from the gym that had been turned into a weight room. We'd do curls and presses and squats. And we'd take turns spotting each other, especially for the bench press. I remember laying (or is it lying?) on my back, lifting the barbells off the holder and pushing up, pulling down, pushing up and pulling down. Maybe I had to do 10 reps. Could have been 25. I don't recall. I usually had 2 or 3 to go before my spotter, usually another kid like me who used Clearasil the way Michael Jackson used makeup, would start yelling at me. Pussy! Wussy! Pussenheimer! Well, nobody ever called me a pussenheimer. But still, I'd get yelled at. It didn't work. Just because I can't lift 150 pounds a 24th time doesn't make me a pussy. Most adults can't lift it once. Instead, I used my superior mind skills to create conflicts. The zit-faced spotter was blocked out (like his zits - Thanks Clearasil!), replaced by my desire to get signed to a big league contract or to win the heart of a senior girl who was dating a football player. (In my high school, football players who were future UPS drivers were higher on the social scale than baseball players who would eventually earn millions of dollars playing baseball. The football players thought we were pussies.) I usually bench pressed that 25th rep. Sometimes I even got to 26. Such was the power of a strong mind.

Andy thinks I'm weak in both mind and body. He always asks me questions. "Do you really want to do this? Why don't you just quit? You suck." The last wasn't a question. It was more a declarative statement. Doesn't sting like pussy, but it's still a present-day truth.

Andy wants to build me back up in mind, body and spirit. I asked him what the difference is between mind and spirit. He quoted a former Navajo warrior. Unfortunately, he did his quote in Navajo, so I still don't know the answer. I'll check later on Wikipedia to see if he even spoke in Navajo or if it was just pig Navajo.

While I may be a pussy who sucks, I have seen a slight change in my habits. I woke up this morning at 5:17 without a kick to the intestines by Miss Yell. After a half-mile or so of running, the soreness crept away. And my mountain bobcat body was able to avoid the shrapnel of paperboy cannon fire. I'm far from the guy who won 24 games three years ago. But I'm closer to him than the guy who spent hours crying in a hospital room last April because my elbow had fallen off of the rest of my arm. I'm all sewn up and getting back to the shape I need to be in to compete.

I'm just hoping the pimple on my chin goes away before opening day. 10% benzoil peroxide doesn't do the trick anymore when you're knocking on the gates of 40.

I'm A M-A-N

The doorbell rang pretty early yesterday morning. It was almost noon. I'd been so busy since I'd fallen out of bed, like with breakfast and stuff, that I hadn't been able to change out of my pajamas. Vanessa had a strange look on her face when she told me to see who was there. I grumbled something about missing the end of Good Times on my Tivo (it was a pre-Janet Jackson episode, so it hadn't jumped the shark yet) as I trudged to the door. She grumbled something about how I looked like I'd fallen right back into my bad habits. I twisted the doorknob in silent denial. It was just jet lag. It is a 3-hour flight home from Florida, after all. I pulled on the door.

A large - very, very large in every way- African-American man stood in front of me. He was smiling. No offense, but I don't live in a neighborhood filled with many smiling and very, very large African-American men. My life passed before my eyes.

And then he began to sing.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: Now when I was a little boy, at the age of five...

My eyes were closed. I could sense a large blunt object was going to strike me across the head. His voice struck me first. It was very good.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: I had somethin in my pocket, keep a lot of folks alive...

My life was still flirting by. I had just reached my early-twenties. He kept on singing.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: Now I'm a man, made twenty-one, you know baby, we can have a lot of fun.

I opened my eyes to see his looking right back into mine. It hit me - not the blunt object - but the realization that he wasn't there to rape and pillage me. I could tell because Vanessa had joined me at the door. She was laughing. The Very, Very Large African-American Man kept on singing.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a man, I spell M... A child. N...man. That mannish boy.
Me: Excuse me.
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a rolling stone.
Me: Hi.
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a roly-poly man.
Me: Do you speak or just sing?
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a hoochie-coochie man.
Me: I'm becoming an annoyed man.

He suddenly stopped. I turned to Vanessa, who had tears in her eyes from her laughter. There was a joke being played, and since I was a little more than clueless, I could tell it was being played on me. I decided to be cool about it all.

Me: This isn't funny! We don't know who this guy is! You need to take life a little more seriously, Vanessa.

What a lovely woman. She patted me on the shoulder, smiled at the man, and retreated to another room. No doubt, she was muttering something about her devotion to me as she disappeared.

The man remained.

Me: What?
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm you're new personal trainer.
Me: I didn't hire you.
Very, Very Large African-American Man: Surprise!

I don't get surprised very often. And although I'd never heard of a singing personal trainer-gram, my immediate assumption was this man should have at least jumped out of a cake. Which made me hungry for lunch. I asked him in, told him I could fire up the oven and we could stuff a couple of personal pizzas in our mouths. He declined for both of us. All he said was "Get dressed." He waited in the front hall while I reluctantly went upstairs to change.

Vanessa was in the bedroom.

Me: Did you know about this?
Vanessa: Yes.
Me: Who arranged this whole thing?
Vanessa: The team that's going to pay you millions of dollars this coming season.
Me: They don't have the right.

Vanessa smiled and sat me down on the bed. I felt a little vulnerable as I hadn't finished changing yet. My underpants were all that separated my manhood from the dressing-down I was about to receive.

She said something like this: Jimmy, I love you. Your family loves you. Your team... doesn't love you the way we do. But they expect you to act a certain way. One of those ways they want you to act is like an athlete, a professional one. They'd like you to be prepared to earn the money they want to pay you. They'd like you to try to be a competitive person again. They'd also like you to see a psychiatrist to treat you for this depression.

I asked if it was the team or her that wanted me to see the psychiatrist. She patted me on the shoulder again and told me it didn't matter.

The point is, the team just signed The Jimmy Scott of Japan because The Jimmy Scott of America no longer exists.

Her: You need a kick in the ass.
Me: I need a stiff drink.
Her: No you don't. Your vice is bad television.
Me: Yeah, but you can't get drunk off of it.

I nodded my head, found some workout pants and pulled them on. She watched me, but not with the eyes of the 20 year old young lady I met and courted way back when Vanessa was 20 years old. No, her eyes now were the disappointed kind. I'd won championships, awards, set records, made millions upon millions of dollars...

And my wife was still disappointed in me.

Men don't cry. But they can sure swallow their pride when their backs are to the wall.

Me: I get it. See you later. I'm going to work out now.

Downstairs, the very, very large African-American Man stood waiting for me. I told him I was ready. Let's go.

For the next six hours, my diet consisted of nothing but carbohydrates and water while my body sweated in places I didn't think had pores. You know what? It felt pretty damn good.

Oh, my new personal trainer is named Andy. He's housebroken. I think we're keeping him.

The Subconscious Flight Home

There was no getting up early this morning, not after 10 hours of delays flying home yesterday from Florida and my body hitting the sheets after 3AM Monday. Had a nightmare flight, a delay that can only rival the wait at a local DMV to get a new driver's license, and, of course, some good news.

We'll start with the good.

We won the bidding for Kai Goto, so it looks like, if we can get him signed now, we'll be a team with a pitching staff that includes Jimmy Scott (me) and "The Jimmy Scott of Japan." It'll be like having two of me on one team. I mentioned this to Rick Churches.

Rick: No it won't.
Me: Yes it will. If you move him to the bullpen, after 8 innings I can relieve myself.
Rick: Always trying to piss me off, huh?

It was only upon reflection while en route home that I realized if Rick had been joking, he would have made an amusing remark, you know, referring to the whole urination... Forget it. Anyway, he was not joking. I still giggled a little bit in anticipation of passing along his subconscious humor. He was a broadcaster for 10 years. He's got to be at least a little funny, right?

Jack, my agent, is Kai's agent. I've tried to get in touch with him (Jack - did I mention he was my agent first?) but he's been busy negotiating with the team (I'm hearing Kai wants 6 years and $96 million) and preparing for the GM meetings which begin today in Florida. So Jack hasn't taken Jimmy Scott's calls because he's working on a big deal for my Japanese clone. No reason for me to be jealous, right? I feel I was very mature on my last call to Jack's office:

Me: Is Jack there?
Voice: To speak with Jack Perry, press 2, to speak with another agent, press...
Me: Hello? Where are you?
Voice: ...to return to the main menu, press star. If...
Me: Screw you, Jack!
Voice: ...repeat your options, press the pound sign or hang up.

I hung up. I had a plane to catch, after all.

Mini Minicamp was good. Because of its being unsanctioned by the union, we weren't allowed to pick up baseballs and throw them. I got there and remembered this from previous Mini Minicamps. I was glad I'd only brought 6 gloves with me instead of the 12 I like to travel with (8 for on field use, 3 for luck, one because it smells real nice). I met with our doctor, Carl Russo, who gave me a good once-over from neck down. He asked how my arm felt. I said the shoulder felt great. He said fine. What about the part of the arm he'd operated on. I told him my elbow was fine. He said fine. Then he performed a few stretching exercises on me that, well, my ears are still ringing from the screams. Doc Russo said this was just scar tissue stretching and breaking. Had I been following his rehab regimen? I told him no. It was no use lying, since he'd read this blog (everybody in the organization has read this blog) and knew exactly where I was in my rehab: At the beginning. I told him I'm better off than he thought. I'm a quick healer. He laughed, told me I was probably at 75% strength, and I should lose some weight and hit the gym.

Walking out, I wondered why he had laughed. A voice said, "Because you can't fool doctors." It was Rick. Apparently, I'd done my wondering aloud.

Rick: You can't fool me either.
Me: Not even a little?
Rick: No.

This from the guy whose nickname in the minors was Hot Foot because he never realized a pack of matches had been stuck under his foot and lit on fire until the 100th time it had been done to him.

Me: Wanna go for a beer?
Rick: No.
Me: Good. I don't drink.
Rick: Why did you ask me then?
Me: I don't know.

I didn't. I think I know now. It was my nervous subconscious speaking out. Rick is my new manager, thus, my new boss. If at any other job I had underperformed this much, I'd have been fired. Lucky for me, my track record is such that the team knows a Jimmy Scott at 75% is better than lots of other guys at 75%. I can already hear Rick's response out loud to that:

Rick Speaking Out Loud, Probably Alone In His Dark Bedroom In White Plains: You still can't pitch in a game at 75%.

In other words, I'm not helping him or the team by being only at 75%. I've got about 10 weeks to increase that 75% to 85%. I usually show up at spring training around 92.73%, so I'll be 7.73% off my normal pace. I can make that up by April 1st. As I told Doc Russo, I'm a quick healer.

Rain Out

I woke up refreshed enough this morning to have the urge to go back to sleep, not because I needed to convalesce after throwing up on demand for two days but because I was sleepy. Vanessa is two to three days ahead of me when it comes to this particular illness. (She's years ahead of me when it comes to everything else.) She knows that once the puking stops, it's time to get out of bed and make up for lost time. After she kicked me at 5:17 AM this morning and gave me the "making up for lost time" speech, I told her that if I had to make up for lost time, I'd never make it into bed in the first place. Because it was 5:17 AM, neither one of us laughed, since it was 5:17 AM and what I said wasn't that funny. Still, I like to think she curled her lip just a little in preparation for a future Mona Lisa smile.

We have a sunroof in our bathroom that, because of the master bathroom's position in the house, rarely gets much sun. It serves other purposes. This morning, the loud striking of water on sunroof told me that rain was pouring down outside. One of the great reasons to be a baseball player for a living is that, unlike football players, we know a little mist can throw off even the most hearty umpires. Add even the threat of rain and, with few exceptions, they get all nervous. Will we get the full game in? Will we get even an official 4 1/2 inning game in? Will my underpants show through my wet butt?

I crawled back into bed. It was raining, after all. I can't play in this. Got a leg kick less than two seconds after hitting the sheets. Here's what happened:

Me: Ouch.
Vanessa: Get up.
Me: It's raining.
Vanessa: I don't care.

Vanessa would have been one of those umpires that insists ball be played until Noah's Ark floated over the Jumbotron looking for two volunteers from each team. (Even God picks All Stars.)

I took another kick, this one to the shin, and rolled out of bed again. Angry with my wife for being strong and capable and a better spouse than me at this point in our marriage, I yanked my pre-chosen running clothes off of the top of the TV and stomped out of the room, careful not to disturb her. I avoided most of the creaky parts of the floor except the big one near the door. As referenced earlier, she's years ahead of me in just about everything. Maturity included.

Outside, the rain poured down. Since I can't run with an umbrella, I took one deep, healthy breath and started, submerging my left foot into a puddle on step #2. Not a good way to begin any exercise period. I considered retreating back inside but assumed Vanessa, in all of her damned wisdom, had rigged some sort of mechanism that would land a mannequin's foot on my thigh, creating a temporary Charlie Horse of epic proportions (and since it's just a mannequin foot, I can only guess the rest of the mannequin's proportions). I put one foot in front of the other - in homage to claymation Christmas TV specials - and began a "light" jog. Remember, I'd been releasing toxic sludge out of my mouth for the past two days. Anything stronger than "light" and the rain would have had to fall into a giant IV bag connecting to my empty veins.

Few cars on the road. The Monday after any holiday, even if the holiday was 4 days previous, is always one of the toughest Mondays of the year. Who wants to put the joy and kinship of the previous 4 days behind them to rejoin their real-world struggles answering phones or answering bosses or running in the pouring rain at 5:29 in the AM time?

Funny thing. I did. After about a half mile, I was completely soaked. Getting wet is tough, but once you're inundated with moisture, you no longer care. It was clear to me that my underpants were showing through my butt, but the cool morning air felt good rushing down my esophagus. The slap of rain against my face became war paint. I haven't worn my game face since last April. I didn't really wear it today. But I came close. A bit of game time intensity pushed its way through the depressed lethargy in my psyche. I could say I felt alive this morning, almost for the first time in 6 months, but I don't want to jinx it. It doesn't rain every morning, and in a couple weeks this could all be snow. Even the heartiest umpires, like my wife, wouldn't force me out running at 5:17 AM in the driving snow.

Right?

Shifting Agendas

Strange morning. I'm never the first one up unless kicked out of the bed by a very attractive lady who has some secret agenda. No agenda like that today. My body, all screwed up from getting up early or getting up late or digesting too much Italian food, was done with sleep at exactly 8:03 AM. Vanessa, who'd been up all night throwing up, had, after all, not had the will power to kick me out of bed at 5:17 in the AM time to get me exercising. And since she had no makeup and had been throwing up all night, the only agenda this vaguely unattractive woman was following was to purge her body of this flu bug. Which meant she'd be in bed all day.

Which meant I'd be on my own all day.

Well, if that's how she wanted to play, then I could follow my own agenda by eating, watching TV, and giving my body more time to heal after my invasive April elbow surgery, exactly 6 months ago today. My agenda including anything but preparing for the next baseball season. Did I mention how being lethargic has been so cathartic for me?

At 9:03 sharp, the phone rang. I let it go since nobody ever calls me. Grace, throwing up 37% less than her sister and mother, was watching TV, the TV I wanted to watch. She picked up the phone and said it was for me. I picked up in the kitchen and figured I'd pour myself a bowl of cereal. I thought we still had some Cocoa Puffs in the cabinet. It was Howard Phillips, who is our union head.

Howard: I read your blog last night.
Me: That's when I wrote it.
Howard: I didn't like it.
Me: You can stop reading then.

It's not so much he didn't like the concept of this fabulous blog, my way to reach out to the masses in a very impersonal way yet still get things off my chest without hurting any feelings or affecting the world negatively. He had two problems with my last post:

1. I had lunch with the commissioner without telling anybody ahead of time.
2. Maybe I stated some positions the union had that could hurt us in upcoming negotiations.

I asked Howard if he'd read the part about how I cut my thumb and ended up getting 6 stitches. He said he was too upset with me to remember. Apparently, commissioner Elliott Pollock, he of the young, charming and good looking ilk, had called Howard this morning to talk. Elliott had gotten a cold feeling from me at lunch and wanted to know if this was true of how our negotiations were going to go. Howard, who already drinks too much Pepto Bismol from the bottle, told Elliott that we would proceed in a professional manner and don't take anything Jimmy Scott says or does as what the entire union wants. Elliott then asked if I was being facetious by characterizing him as young, charming and good looking in last night's blog. Howard said he couldn't speak directly for me, but he was sure I meant nothing other than the fact that Elliott was, and is, young, charming and good looking. Elliott ended the conversation gracefully, as Howard did with me, asking me not to blog for a few days or so to "let the congestion in the air clear of the foul smell I'd created."

A little miffed, I couldn't eat my Cocoa Puffs. I guess neither Elliott nor Howard cared about my bloody thumb and six stitches. I decided to leave the kitchen to itself.

Vanessa still hadn't stirred out of bed, so I went upstairs. She was in the same position I'd left her in 30 minutes or so earlier, only Julia had joined her on my side of the bed. Neither female was wearing any makeup, but they were awake, watching TV. She could tell something bothered me, Vanessa that is, so she asked me to get her a wet washcloth and then tell her all about it. I got her the washcloth, but it wasn't wet enough. I went back into the bathroom and brought it back to her. Now it was dripping too much. I went back and squeezed the hell out of it. Just right. Now Julia wanted one. I had to go into the hallway and find another dry washcloth so that I could make it not too wet but wet enough that it would be just right for my lovely daughter whose face was covered in burst blood vessels from barfing for almost two days straight. I did so and she smiled, which was nice to see. Vanessa clicked off the TV and said they were going to try to sleep some more. She'd forgotten that I was supposed to tell her everything about the Elliott lunch debacle I had created and Howard's distressed call over how my cut thumb that neither man seemed to care about was going to lead to the owners contracting 5 teams and making salary cap of five dollars and ninety five cents per team. I left them to their germs and returned downstairs.

Grace was still watching TV. But now she was texting on her cell phone. I asked her why she just didn't call the person and save the skin on her fingertips. She hushed me and went on tapping, quite intensely. I asked her what the subject was and she looked at me, knowing I was completely bored. Here's how the conversation went.

Me: What are you typing?
Grace: Nothing.
Me: Are you keeping a secret from your father?
Grace: No.
Me: Well, still...

I left the room to her tapping and her germs and her teenage angst. I should have told her to put a Nirvana disc on the CD player for some angst inspiration, but I don't think she knows what a CD is. If you can't download it for free from some site that is named after strange fruit or extinct Japanese giant monsters, then it must not be worth owning in the first place.

I still wasn't hungry, the TVs were taken up, and I was completely confused about my place in the union and bored with doing a whole lot of nothing. At a crossroads, I had two ways to go:

1. Come up with a hobby real quick and immerse myself in it.
2. Work out.

I took a deep breath, positive that I was immune to my family's vomit spasms, and snuck back into my bedroom. The ladies without makeup were snoring gently. I picked spots on the floor that wouldn't creak and grabbed some sweats out of my drawer. Picking the same spots for the return trip out of the room, I closed the door with a gentle thud.

Ten minutes later, I was running the streets of Madison, waving to cars honking their horns at me and some college kids on Thanksgiving break who sang the "Rocky" theme song to me. Yeah, we forget how fat Sly was in the first Rocky.

So today was Agenda Slapdown Day. At least for me. I felt pretty good after my run, too. Maybe it won't be so bad getting up early tomorrow. As much as I seem to fight it, the road beckons this bored soul. The time of my self-imposed lethargy has just about run out.