I haven't updated this in nearly two months. Bad Jill! Bad blogger! Shame!
It's not that I haven't been writing (the frequent updates on my adoption blog are proof of that). Or that nothing has happened for me to write about.
I've mostly gotten very lazy lately, and also depressed. And my fibromyalgia is doing bad, bad things to me. I wake up most mornings feeling like someone beat me soundly with a potato sack full of unripe fruit. Which is not, as you can imagine, a very pleasant thing.
I used to take meds for my fibro, and they worked well enough. But I stopped taking them when I got pregnant, and never started them again. They were expensive, for one. Also, I think one of them might have been doing some sort of damage to my kidneys. And Barbers have kidney problems to begin with.
So no more fibro meds for me. I'm not taking the antidepressant I was on before my pregnancy, either. I'm back on Zoloft. The SSRI I was taking before has a high incidence of liver damage. And I'm very attached to my liver. I've had it as long as I can remember. Also, for some reason, I have always been skeeved out at the thought of anything liver-related. I like to pretend I don't even have a liver.
So apparently I can either have good brain chemistry and lots of energy, or I can have a liver and kidneys. I've rather unsportingly chosen the latter.
I think that's it for now.
16 February 2010
29 December 2009
Big Ghouls Don't Cry
I have recently re-discovered eyeliner.
I'm probably a little slow on the get-go, here, since I'm 26, and the last time I was at the mall I saw these 10-year-olds who were more heavily made up than a Miss America contestant. But I'm a little on the uncoordinated side, and I've found that I do best with makeup that can't render me blind if I mess up.
I tried eyeliner a number of years ago. It was a bad thing, very bad. I was even pastier in my teens and early twenties than I am now, if you'll believe it, and I was clueless when it came to cosmetics. But I'd started reading Glamour magazine, and their makeup tips were pretty and colorful and they encouraged me. If this 14-year-old Brazilian model in the photographs can do it, I told myself, than so can I! It didn't occur to me at the time that the model probably couldn't do it either, and the makeup she was holding was probably a prop for the photos, and the photos were likely taken in between bits of work by a highly trained makeup artist.
But I was a little slow - I grew up in a pathetically small and isolated town, and I thought I could do it. I bought eyeliner. Charcoal black eyeliner. Did I mention how pale I was? And that I have blue eyes, and that my hair was at the time fairly light? And I bought black eyeliner. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Especially since Glamour was, at the time, spreading the rumor that any woman can wear red lipstick.
Suffice it to say that even my best, most practiced efforts left me looking like a Kabuki hooker.
A few years later, when I was about twenty or so, I decided to try again. I thought maybe it would be okay if I dropped the red lipstick. But I was still terribly pale, and horribly unskilled with an eyeliner pencil. If my hair had been darker I'd have looked goth. As it was, with the beret I'd decided to start wearing, I looked a bit like a mime. I am terrified of mimes and clowns. So once again I gave up on the idea of ever wearing eyeliner.
But recently (I'm a little slow as I said) I discovered Sephora, and I decided I needed to give eyeliner one more shot. I found a Sephora brand pencil in a pretty dark copper color. I practiced. I discovered I actually looked okay if I applied to my heart's content and then used a Q-Tip to remove 75-80% of what I'd put on. I actually looked pretty good, if I say so myself. I started wearing it almost every day, and I thought I looked terribly sophisticated and alluring.
Then one day, in a fit of hormone-fueled frustration, I ended up crying about something. I expected sympathy, at the very least, from my mother. What I didn't expect was the look of abject horror on her face.
"Jill! Are you okay?"
"Do I look like I'm okay?" was my mature, controlled response. Come on, Mom, I'm crying here!
"Your eyes are bleeding!" she said, shoving a fistful of Kleenex in my direction.
As it turns out, a big part of the pretty copper color was red pigment, and my tears mixed with the eyeliner to form a rather convincing-looking sort of fake blood. I had to take my contacts out and clean them and spend a good ten minutes removing the red streaks from my eyes and face.
Oh, well. Maybe I'll try again in a few years.
I'm probably a little slow on the get-go, here, since I'm 26, and the last time I was at the mall I saw these 10-year-olds who were more heavily made up than a Miss America contestant. But I'm a little on the uncoordinated side, and I've found that I do best with makeup that can't render me blind if I mess up.
I tried eyeliner a number of years ago. It was a bad thing, very bad. I was even pastier in my teens and early twenties than I am now, if you'll believe it, and I was clueless when it came to cosmetics. But I'd started reading Glamour magazine, and their makeup tips were pretty and colorful and they encouraged me. If this 14-year-old Brazilian model in the photographs can do it, I told myself, than so can I! It didn't occur to me at the time that the model probably couldn't do it either, and the makeup she was holding was probably a prop for the photos, and the photos were likely taken in between bits of work by a highly trained makeup artist.
But I was a little slow - I grew up in a pathetically small and isolated town, and I thought I could do it. I bought eyeliner. Charcoal black eyeliner. Did I mention how pale I was? And that I have blue eyes, and that my hair was at the time fairly light? And I bought black eyeliner. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Especially since Glamour was, at the time, spreading the rumor that any woman can wear red lipstick.
Suffice it to say that even my best, most practiced efforts left me looking like a Kabuki hooker.
A few years later, when I was about twenty or so, I decided to try again. I thought maybe it would be okay if I dropped the red lipstick. But I was still terribly pale, and horribly unskilled with an eyeliner pencil. If my hair had been darker I'd have looked goth. As it was, with the beret I'd decided to start wearing, I looked a bit like a mime. I am terrified of mimes and clowns. So once again I gave up on the idea of ever wearing eyeliner.
But recently (I'm a little slow as I said) I discovered Sephora, and I decided I needed to give eyeliner one more shot. I found a Sephora brand pencil in a pretty dark copper color. I practiced. I discovered I actually looked okay if I applied to my heart's content and then used a Q-Tip to remove 75-80% of what I'd put on. I actually looked pretty good, if I say so myself. I started wearing it almost every day, and I thought I looked terribly sophisticated and alluring.
Then one day, in a fit of hormone-fueled frustration, I ended up crying about something. I expected sympathy, at the very least, from my mother. What I didn't expect was the look of abject horror on her face.
"Jill! Are you okay?"
"Do I look like I'm okay?" was my mature, controlled response. Come on, Mom, I'm crying here!
"Your eyes are bleeding!" she said, shoving a fistful of Kleenex in my direction.
As it turns out, a big part of the pretty copper color was red pigment, and my tears mixed with the eyeliner to form a rather convincing-looking sort of fake blood. I had to take my contacts out and clean them and spend a good ten minutes removing the red streaks from my eyes and face.
Oh, well. Maybe I'll try again in a few years.
20 December 2009
08 December 2009
Whine, whine, whine
It's been a while since I complained. Something must be wrong with me. I ALWAYS complain. I need to rectify the situation. So here goes - the latest list of things that are cheesing me off today.
-It's called the fast lane for a reason. If you want to go 60, get out of the fast lane. 60 is not fast. Especially when the speed limit is 65. Speed up, change lanes, or be prepared for a vicious tailgating.
-I hate it when I want to read a book that has been made into a film or TV show and I can't find a copy at the store that doesn't have Jennifer Aniston's dumb face on the front. Famous actors and actresses rarely look the way I imagine characters to be, and I'm buying the dang book, people, not the movie. They are rarely the same. Did you know they changed the whole bloody end of "My Sister's Keeper"? And Cameron Diaz is SO not the mother I pictured.
-While I'm on the subject, I bought "Flash Forward" at Barnes & Noble the other day and the description on the back of the book is a description of THE TV SHOW. Not the book, the TV show. And they are not the same thing. The book is very different.
-It's not irritating, but when I was at the zoo last, I walked past the primate exhibits, and a zoo employee nearby asked me, "Do you want to go in the monkey house?" which wouldn't have been funny except his tone of voice made it sound like the worst chat-up line in history. I don't think he said it that way intentionally, because he looked confused when I laughed and declined his offer.
-I got a new debit card a few months ago because the old one finally expired. I didn't just get a new card, though, I got a new PIN. I didn't want a new PIN. I'd had the old PIN for 10 years. I wrote the new one down somewhere but I lost it and it's really irritating. I tell cashiers to run the card through as credit but they always forget, and they have to cancel what they did, and sometimes my card won't work again so quickly, and I have to use another card.
-I seem to be missing $600 from my savings account. Last time I checked, I had $700 in savings. Now I have $123. I'd check out my transaction record, but the credit union website no longer likes my password and I'm too lazy to call their corporate office and fix it. I shouldn't have to! I KNOW I have the right password.
-I'm not very funny anymore. I used to be funny. Then people started telling me I was funny. The more people told me, the less funny I got. Now I'm about as humorous as cancer.
-TV Guide magazine keeps cheating and putting together these double issues. It's a double issue because they put two weeks in one. Which means two weeks of listings but only half the other content I'm paying for. And they got rid of the "Is It Just Me?" column, which was my favorite.
-I've had a migraine for three weeks.
-Did you know that the Salvation Army bell ringers make like $7.25 an hour? They can't even be bringing that much in with those little buckets. Which makes me suspect that the money I donate goes to pay bell ringer salaries and not to help the homeless. The bells were irritating enough when I thought they were helping society. Now that I know it's not a volunteer operation, it's extra irritating.
-I hope I never meet Stephenie Meyer, because if I do, I'm likely to hurt her. If I have to hear the words "Twilight," "New Moon," "Jacob," "Edward," or "Sparkly Vampire" one more time I will bloody lose it. It is a bloody stupid book, people! And yet there are women - grown women in their forties and fifties, puff-painting t-shirts and screaming about Robert Pattinson. Can you imagine if the genders were reversed? It wouldn't be cute if a bunch of middle aged men lined up to see Miley Cyrus walk the red carpet.
-Speaking of, WTH happened to Miley? She used to be this cute, age-appropriate, normal little thing. Now she's a cheap skank. I cringe when I hear my 7-year-old niece talking about Hannah Montana.
-I am only going to say this once (once today, anyway): Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, looks good in skinny jeans. Skinny jeans are gross. I'm looking at you, Jonas Brothers.
-Fibromyalgia sucks. I sleep for ten hours and wake up feeling like it was closer to 10 minutes. And I feel like someone was beating me with a sack of unripe fruit while I slept. And you know how sometimes you don't feel like exercising but you know that if you do, you'll get this nice energy rush? Fibro ruins that. I exercise and feel like crap. Worse than crap. Crap squared.
-People keep feeling the need to chastise me for complaining. Because it could be worse and I could be homeless and disabled and have no family and no food, or because I don't live in the coldest place in the world, or because I'm not fat enough to require surgery. Well you know what folks? If I want to complain, I can complain. I don't care if there are people who are worse off than me, I don't care if I'm not the fattest person in the world, and I don't care if you don't consider 50* to be sufficiently cold. I'm crabby and tired and thoroughly miserable and a size 18, and if I want to whine, I'm by gosh going to whine. I'm allowed to, and you can't stop me.
-Someone asked me the other day about "giving away" my baby. Excuse me? I did not give her away. I placed her for adoption with a wonderful couple. I did not put an ad on Craigslist.
-I used to be able to wear my contacts for days, even sleep in them, and these days I get five, maybe six hours of comfortable wear out of them and then they hurt my eyes. Well, that was a fun fourteen years.
Enough about me. I've found a new way to annoy others - or to trick them, in any case. When I'm at the zoo, I'll pick an empty patch of land to stare at and photograph, and I'll see how many people stop to stare, too. My record is five.
-It's called the fast lane for a reason. If you want to go 60, get out of the fast lane. 60 is not fast. Especially when the speed limit is 65. Speed up, change lanes, or be prepared for a vicious tailgating.
-I hate it when I want to read a book that has been made into a film or TV show and I can't find a copy at the store that doesn't have Jennifer Aniston's dumb face on the front. Famous actors and actresses rarely look the way I imagine characters to be, and I'm buying the dang book, people, not the movie. They are rarely the same. Did you know they changed the whole bloody end of "My Sister's Keeper"? And Cameron Diaz is SO not the mother I pictured.
-While I'm on the subject, I bought "Flash Forward" at Barnes & Noble the other day and the description on the back of the book is a description of THE TV SHOW. Not the book, the TV show. And they are not the same thing. The book is very different.
-It's not irritating, but when I was at the zoo last, I walked past the primate exhibits, and a zoo employee nearby asked me, "Do you want to go in the monkey house?" which wouldn't have been funny except his tone of voice made it sound like the worst chat-up line in history. I don't think he said it that way intentionally, because he looked confused when I laughed and declined his offer.
-I got a new debit card a few months ago because the old one finally expired. I didn't just get a new card, though, I got a new PIN. I didn't want a new PIN. I'd had the old PIN for 10 years. I wrote the new one down somewhere but I lost it and it's really irritating. I tell cashiers to run the card through as credit but they always forget, and they have to cancel what they did, and sometimes my card won't work again so quickly, and I have to use another card.
-I seem to be missing $600 from my savings account. Last time I checked, I had $700 in savings. Now I have $123. I'd check out my transaction record, but the credit union website no longer likes my password and I'm too lazy to call their corporate office and fix it. I shouldn't have to! I KNOW I have the right password.
-I'm not very funny anymore. I used to be funny. Then people started telling me I was funny. The more people told me, the less funny I got. Now I'm about as humorous as cancer.
-TV Guide magazine keeps cheating and putting together these double issues. It's a double issue because they put two weeks in one. Which means two weeks of listings but only half the other content I'm paying for. And they got rid of the "Is It Just Me?" column, which was my favorite.
-I've had a migraine for three weeks.
-Did you know that the Salvation Army bell ringers make like $7.25 an hour? They can't even be bringing that much in with those little buckets. Which makes me suspect that the money I donate goes to pay bell ringer salaries and not to help the homeless. The bells were irritating enough when I thought they were helping society. Now that I know it's not a volunteer operation, it's extra irritating.
-I hope I never meet Stephenie Meyer, because if I do, I'm likely to hurt her. If I have to hear the words "Twilight," "New Moon," "Jacob," "Edward," or "Sparkly Vampire" one more time I will bloody lose it. It is a bloody stupid book, people! And yet there are women - grown women in their forties and fifties, puff-painting t-shirts and screaming about Robert Pattinson. Can you imagine if the genders were reversed? It wouldn't be cute if a bunch of middle aged men lined up to see Miley Cyrus walk the red carpet.
-Speaking of, WTH happened to Miley? She used to be this cute, age-appropriate, normal little thing. Now she's a cheap skank. I cringe when I hear my 7-year-old niece talking about Hannah Montana.
-I am only going to say this once (once today, anyway): Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, looks good in skinny jeans. Skinny jeans are gross. I'm looking at you, Jonas Brothers.
-Fibromyalgia sucks. I sleep for ten hours and wake up feeling like it was closer to 10 minutes. And I feel like someone was beating me with a sack of unripe fruit while I slept. And you know how sometimes you don't feel like exercising but you know that if you do, you'll get this nice energy rush? Fibro ruins that. I exercise and feel like crap. Worse than crap. Crap squared.
-People keep feeling the need to chastise me for complaining. Because it could be worse and I could be homeless and disabled and have no family and no food, or because I don't live in the coldest place in the world, or because I'm not fat enough to require surgery. Well you know what folks? If I want to complain, I can complain. I don't care if there are people who are worse off than me, I don't care if I'm not the fattest person in the world, and I don't care if you don't consider 50* to be sufficiently cold. I'm crabby and tired and thoroughly miserable and a size 18, and if I want to whine, I'm by gosh going to whine. I'm allowed to, and you can't stop me.
-Someone asked me the other day about "giving away" my baby. Excuse me? I did not give her away. I placed her for adoption with a wonderful couple. I did not put an ad on Craigslist.
-I used to be able to wear my contacts for days, even sleep in them, and these days I get five, maybe six hours of comfortable wear out of them and then they hurt my eyes. Well, that was a fun fourteen years.
Enough about me. I've found a new way to annoy others - or to trick them, in any case. When I'm at the zoo, I'll pick an empty patch of land to stare at and photograph, and I'll see how many people stop to stare, too. My record is five.
21 November 2009
Missed connections
I have done a craptastic job of blogging lately. I can think of a number of reasons for it but none of them are very good.
In the time I have spent online not blogging, I have been indulging a guilty pleasure. I am slightly addicted to the "Missed Connections" section on Craigslist. Have you ever looked at Missed Connections?
The concept is a simple one. You're out somewhere - a club, a grocery store, a gas station. You see someone, you make eye contact, maybe you say hi. And then the moment is gone, and so is the person you connected with. So you go to Missed Connections, write up what happened, and see if that person responds.
If I'm honest, I don't read Missed Connections because I have missed any connections. My purposes are much more nefarious than that. I do it for entertainment. Because there are an awful lot of idiots in the world, and these days most of them have internet access.
I stick to m4w, Men for Women, because I've found that men tend to be a bit more ridiculous and maudlin in their posting. I've only gotten a laugh out of Women for Men once or twice. M4w? The world is a scary place, ladies and gentlemen.
I am slightly worried that so many men seem to find "hot" women shopping at Wal-Mart. Especially West Valley Wal-Marts. The West Valley is where 99.9% of violent crimes in Phoenix seem to occur. And Wal-Mart is ... well, have you been to the People of Wal-Mart website? It's a leper colony.
But overweight hoochies aside, there is a sort of poetic stupidity in the subject lines I've encountered. I've been collecting them for a while, and I'd like to share my favorites with you, faithful reader.
I think my favorite so far is "You returned a Derek Jeter Halloween Costume." Brilliant, isn't it? There'll be no mistaking that one. How many people returned Derek Jeter costumes? Actually, I'm not sure, but I think this one is still brilliant, and I never even read the posting, just the headline. The headline is all I ever read, if I'm honest.
Equally brilliant (in its stupidity, anyway) is "You startled me in the alley while I was peeing." Kind sir, while I don't doubt you may have been stumbled upon by a beautiful woman in the alley, do you really think that said woman is going to be interested in a man who urinates in public? Is she going to be sitting home, thinking to herself, "You know, that guy who was peeing in the alley was pretty hot. I wonder if he noticed me?"
There has to be a story behind "I can't believe you bossed your grandma around" and I, for one want to know what it is. I read the listing for this one and I'm still not sure what was going on. Or why a man would be interested in a woman who bosses her grandma around.
"No Tip was big enough, Emily." Was it because Emily was beautiful or because Emily was an unusually competent waitress? The world will never know, because I never read the posting and the listing's expired. Alas. Rest assured, Emily, your efforts didn't go unnoticed.
I have a few questions for the man who posted "T-BIRD ER WAITING ROOM." Sir, who sits in an ER waiting room and checks out the women there? Especially T-Bird. Their patients are either criminals or the elderly. I realize you're stuck there for four or five hours, but maybe you ought to let the doctors reattach the woman's severed hand before you attempt to hit on her. Just a thought.
When I read "I bought eggs from you =)" I sincerely hoped it wasn't from the same people who post every day offering 8 grand to a Jewish egg donor. Perhaps it was a trade, as the same day, posted in w4m, was "to the kind stranger who bought my pumpkin."
Ah, Craigslist. You give so much and ask so little. Idiots of the world, post on. And please be specific.
In the time I have spent online not blogging, I have been indulging a guilty pleasure. I am slightly addicted to the "Missed Connections" section on Craigslist. Have you ever looked at Missed Connections?
The concept is a simple one. You're out somewhere - a club, a grocery store, a gas station. You see someone, you make eye contact, maybe you say hi. And then the moment is gone, and so is the person you connected with. So you go to Missed Connections, write up what happened, and see if that person responds.
If I'm honest, I don't read Missed Connections because I have missed any connections. My purposes are much more nefarious than that. I do it for entertainment. Because there are an awful lot of idiots in the world, and these days most of them have internet access.
I stick to m4w, Men for Women, because I've found that men tend to be a bit more ridiculous and maudlin in their posting. I've only gotten a laugh out of Women for Men once or twice. M4w? The world is a scary place, ladies and gentlemen.
I am slightly worried that so many men seem to find "hot" women shopping at Wal-Mart. Especially West Valley Wal-Marts. The West Valley is where 99.9% of violent crimes in Phoenix seem to occur. And Wal-Mart is ... well, have you been to the People of Wal-Mart website? It's a leper colony.
But overweight hoochies aside, there is a sort of poetic stupidity in the subject lines I've encountered. I've been collecting them for a while, and I'd like to share my favorites with you, faithful reader.
I think my favorite so far is "You returned a Derek Jeter Halloween Costume." Brilliant, isn't it? There'll be no mistaking that one. How many people returned Derek Jeter costumes? Actually, I'm not sure, but I think this one is still brilliant, and I never even read the posting, just the headline. The headline is all I ever read, if I'm honest.
Equally brilliant (in its stupidity, anyway) is "You startled me in the alley while I was peeing." Kind sir, while I don't doubt you may have been stumbled upon by a beautiful woman in the alley, do you really think that said woman is going to be interested in a man who urinates in public? Is she going to be sitting home, thinking to herself, "You know, that guy who was peeing in the alley was pretty hot. I wonder if he noticed me?"
There has to be a story behind "I can't believe you bossed your grandma around" and I, for one want to know what it is. I read the listing for this one and I'm still not sure what was going on. Or why a man would be interested in a woman who bosses her grandma around.
"No Tip was big enough, Emily." Was it because Emily was beautiful or because Emily was an unusually competent waitress? The world will never know, because I never read the posting and the listing's expired. Alas. Rest assured, Emily, your efforts didn't go unnoticed.
I have a few questions for the man who posted "T-BIRD ER WAITING ROOM." Sir, who sits in an ER waiting room and checks out the women there? Especially T-Bird. Their patients are either criminals or the elderly. I realize you're stuck there for four or five hours, but maybe you ought to let the doctors reattach the woman's severed hand before you attempt to hit on her. Just a thought.
When I read "I bought eggs from you =)" I sincerely hoped it wasn't from the same people who post every day offering 8 grand to a Jewish egg donor. Perhaps it was a trade, as the same day, posted in w4m, was "to the kind stranger who bought my pumpkin."
Ah, Craigslist. You give so much and ask so little. Idiots of the world, post on. And please be specific.
16 November 2009
You Can't Say I Didn't Get Something Out of It
In mid-October, my mother and I attended Kendall Summerhawk's Money, Marketing and Soul Intensive, or MMSI for short. My mother was excited to learn about how to grow her business and market herself. I was excited to get a facial at the hotel spa. But my ticket was dirt cheap owing to a great deal my mother got, so I went along to the workshop as her personal assistant.
I don't know if it was the stress of travel or the fact that I sleep poorly in hotel beds, but I had the attention span of a fruit bat during the event. I could not pay attention had my life depended on it. I tried very hard to pay attention but failed miserably. I thought that perhaps if I took notes, I'd do better. I was wrong.
The notebook wasn't lined. I can't write in an unlined notebook. Not only that, I can't stop myself from drawing in an unlined notebook. Never mind that I have little to no artistic ability to speak of. So while my mother and the rest of the crowd were excitedly learning about money archetypes and branding and seeding and all sorts of strange verbs, this is the sum of what I accomplished in four days.
I showed my mother my work. I'm not sure if she was horrified or amused. I like to think she was amused. And my facial was awesome.
I don't know if it was the stress of travel or the fact that I sleep poorly in hotel beds, but I had the attention span of a fruit bat during the event. I could not pay attention had my life depended on it. I tried very hard to pay attention but failed miserably. I thought that perhaps if I took notes, I'd do better. I was wrong.
The notebook wasn't lined. I can't write in an unlined notebook. Not only that, I can't stop myself from drawing in an unlined notebook. Never mind that I have little to no artistic ability to speak of. So while my mother and the rest of the crowd were excitedly learning about money archetypes and branding and seeding and all sorts of strange verbs, this is the sum of what I accomplished in four days.
I showed my mother my work. I'm not sure if she was horrified or amused. I like to think she was amused. And my facial was awesome.
04 November 2009
Baseball Will Kill You
I mentioned on Twitter the other day that when the Yankees won the world series 11 years ago, my father killed a man.
This is a true story.
But lest my father's memory be tarnished with a half-truth, I feel I should clarify what exactly happened in 1998. Although my father hated the Yankees, he certainly didn't mean to kill anyone. Especially not Leo Larson.
Leo was my parents' insurance agent for around 25 years and a friend of my father's. Despite a near lifetime in Arizona, Leo was a big, big fan of the New York Yankees. In the mid-90s, Leo took on a position of leadership in our church. My father was the executive secretary, so he attended every Tuesday meeting the church leaders had. Leo and my dad used to talk baseball, because my father couldn't stand the Yankees and because Leo loved them.
I should mention here that Leo was diabetic, and there were complications. His health was poor, but his spirits were good. Leo, busy with work and church all day, missed game 4. My dad saw the game before he left for the church - a bit later than he'd have normally left, but he was hoping the Padres could pull it off and force a fifth game. No such luck, however, as the final score was 3-0.
The meetings proceeded as usual that night and, my father later said, if Leo was a bit quieter than usual, no one noticed. He looked a little pale, but that was typical given his health. When the meetings were over, everyone left but my father and Leo, waiting to rehash the game.
"Well, Leo," my father said, eying the man's Yankees necktie, "The Yankees won it. You can die a happy man."
And he did, late that night or early the next morning. I never heard for sure when it happened. But my father said later that he was pretty sure he was the last one to see Leo alive, and that other than a goodbye, "die a happy man" were the last words anyone ever spoke to him.
Last year, a month after my father died, I was watching the Dodgers lose the NLCS, and I remembered that world series ten years ago, and I smiled to myself for a minute, thinking that when my dad ran into Leo in the next life, perhaps Leo would reassure my dad that he had indeed died a happy man.
This is a true story.
But lest my father's memory be tarnished with a half-truth, I feel I should clarify what exactly happened in 1998. Although my father hated the Yankees, he certainly didn't mean to kill anyone. Especially not Leo Larson.
Leo was my parents' insurance agent for around 25 years and a friend of my father's. Despite a near lifetime in Arizona, Leo was a big, big fan of the New York Yankees. In the mid-90s, Leo took on a position of leadership in our church. My father was the executive secretary, so he attended every Tuesday meeting the church leaders had. Leo and my dad used to talk baseball, because my father couldn't stand the Yankees and because Leo loved them.
I should mention here that Leo was diabetic, and there were complications. His health was poor, but his spirits were good. Leo, busy with work and church all day, missed game 4. My dad saw the game before he left for the church - a bit later than he'd have normally left, but he was hoping the Padres could pull it off and force a fifth game. No such luck, however, as the final score was 3-0.
The meetings proceeded as usual that night and, my father later said, if Leo was a bit quieter than usual, no one noticed. He looked a little pale, but that was typical given his health. When the meetings were over, everyone left but my father and Leo, waiting to rehash the game.
"Well, Leo," my father said, eying the man's Yankees necktie, "The Yankees won it. You can die a happy man."
And he did, late that night or early the next morning. I never heard for sure when it happened. But my father said later that he was pretty sure he was the last one to see Leo alive, and that other than a goodbye, "die a happy man" were the last words anyone ever spoke to him.
Last year, a month after my father died, I was watching the Dodgers lose the NLCS, and I remembered that world series ten years ago, and I smiled to myself for a minute, thinking that when my dad ran into Leo in the next life, perhaps Leo would reassure my dad that he had indeed died a happy man.
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