Delighted with my days.

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With Red Ruff at the end of the 2007 season.

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”What do you do while everybody is watching the game,” Wintersong asked me yesterday.

"It all depends on the game,” I answer, but looking at the pictures you would think I only stood and waved. Or waved and smiled. Or perhaps smiled. That thought delights me as I do so much more.

I talk too.

There I am in picture after picture with my mouth open and something coming out. Usually words. Once, I was sticking my tongue out at the camera, but perhaps that too is normal. Since my husband comes to the ball game with camera, I’m blessed with plenty of pictures of me not working, me smiling, and my ever-ready mouth open to the winds flapping away before, during, and after the games. My mouth is open or smiling in pictures given me by fan’s too…..thank you. In all of them I’m laughing and delighting in the day.

The truth is, no matter what job or what I do at work, most of my day is spent alone not smiling. I like that.

During the baseball season, I get up alone in the mornings, write in my blog, take the bus downtown alone, and walk across through the exciting reconstruction of the “Gaslamp District” to the ballpark alone. My badge is tucked into my shirt so I am semi anonymous….if a large red and black middle-aged lady with a camera can be anonymous. I now trail a black and gold rolling backpack heavily stocked with my days entertainments. Perhaps I was even less anonymous with my purple backpack on top of my red coat. It grew too heavy to carry.

I check in through the “Park In The Park,” which is a public park at the rear of the ballpark and open to the public until a few hours before game time. After I find someone to unlock my gates, I’m ready to set up for the day. I pull my table out, wash it off, dust off my chairs, pull out water and book, then set out my ephemera for the baseball fans. I’ve found that having parking plans, schedules, restaurant guides, and Handicapped Services folders are all useful day after day. I hide my backpack inside an “I” beam just inside my gate so I have coat, gloves, lunch, water, reading stuff, and baseball stuff right there instead of a 30 minute walk away. Hidden too. I look much more professional.

My radio is in my ear, turned on, turned to the right channel, and hooked to the back of my belt. I double check that. Of such small things is my day made. What ever book I am currently reading has been laid out. Since it is usually sunny though chilly at the beginning of the season, I have my gloves and scarf, near to hand, and my and diet coke is hidden right over there in the bushes. I settle in to read as a few joggers pass by.

Dog owners stop to say hi. I pull a tiny dog bone out for Bailey, Sophie, or Webster, and I keep a larger one or two for the bigger dogs. Zac and his gramma stop for a moment also. Three once large-lady-walkers come by at top speed all yelling nice things my way. I yell nice things back at them. The shadows slowly creep up to my chair, and as the first retired cops whip by on their tiny stand-up motor bikes, I know my day at work has begun.



(To be continued:)

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Duck: We didn’t visit yesterday because we had a dinner visitor. We told the receptionist, his rolling friend Allie, and told him that we wouldn’t be there. He will not remember. Last night, the noodles were not a success but the oven roasted asparagus was as were the salad and desert.
Me: It’s all continuing. Tomorrow 1st PT appointment. I awoke in no pain at all at last both hip and knee. Maybe I stayed perfectly still all night long.
G: Continued rebuilding everything he lost while pleading for a new computer.
Weather: 63 for the high. 42 for the low. Oh Brr…usually you can subtract two to three degrees here. They say a front is moving in just in time for the Buick Open at Torrey Pines. There will be snow in Boston.
WW: The Online WW points tracker is such a complicated program for my much befuddled brain. Did I say that? At least it works. I am using all the points allowed. Yesterday I used more than….which probably makes me less than.