We've gotten some welcome rain since last night, ending a painfully long spell of relentlessly hot dry weather, and particularly bad air. I have always loved the rain. While I am sorry that The Youngest's summer wooden bat season-opening double header, previously scheduled for tonight, has been postponed until Tuesday, as much as I was looking forward to it, I will gladly exchange it for a lazy rainy afternoon at home, as the water rushes loudly down the swollen creek in the gulley overlooked by our treehouse of a back porch. It couldn't be lovlier. I'm still smiling from our little championship run earlier this month. They did it, my determined group of players, young men, most of them getting ready to head off to college, drawn together by the love of a game. We were almost knocked into the "lower tier" for the playoffs, but I protested to league management. "No! We'd rather be two and out [of the double elimination tournament] in the upper tier than roll over the lower tier," and they granted my wish, reluctantly. Then we won the thing, the lowest seeded team, one game at a time, five games in all, upsetting every other team in the top tier, with the final unlikely win coming under the lights on a hot June night, while the fire fighters watched from the back railing of the station, just beyond the left field fence, as if somehow my players simply willed it. It still feels good. Since then, I've put in some volunteer hours and scored seven games of the Little League nine-year-old tournament. It was a pleasant chance to see some old friends I hadn't seen in a while, but, honestly, coming off of watching what my big boys had done over the previous two weeks, it was amusing, but not wholly engaging [read: like watching paint dry] and I still think it's about time for me to quit Little League. I am also really looking forward to being just another parent on the wooden bat team. I will keep the book and help with admin, but the coaching will rest in the able hands of an old friend we haven't played with in years.
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I have a strong desire to get out of this town. Maybe it's because The Husband... came to visit three weeks ago and I turned soft and let him stay to watch The Youngest's playoffs (he is, after all, his father) and then let him stay for Father's Day (for obvious reasons) and then he just didn't leave, thinking he'd get his money from The Matter About Which I Cannot Speak, which settled three weeks ago, any day, and just go ahead and get his own place in the city. I'm not sure where we are with it all, but his attorney told him last Wednesday that they were expecting a wire transfer. Of course, there will likely be all sorts of accounting and taking various shares thereof, but, as soon as he gets his share, and I can see the way to paying the next batch of tuition, I intend to take a few days (a week?) off from The KnockingShitDown Company ("KSDCo") and go to New Orleans to visit the Middle Son, who I recently am missing terribly. He left to go back to school on the morning of New Year's Eve and has since only been back for three days of Easter weekend. I need a little time with him. I want to see his house, and take him shopping for his room and his kitchen and stock the freezer and pantry before school starts again, maybe just to feel like a Mom again. It's something I was able to do, loved doing, for The Oldest when he moved into his own place(es) during college. It's past due.
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I don't want to say too much for fear of jinxing anything, but I think I may have found a consulting client, more in line with what we used to do in our business. While it wouldn't replace my income at the KSDCo, it could be a solid step in the right direction, and I'm very excited about it. It came to me via an old friend who happened to know of both their need and my experience. I think we've agreed on the terms. Realistically, I expect we'll get started after the holiday, although I'd be happy to move things along this week, if that's possible. I'm not completely sure how I'm going to work it in with my day job, but I'll find a way, even if it means cutting back on my hours. It seems to me that I'm one piece of the puzzle away from being able to support myself working for myself. What that piece may be, isn't clear, but I have faith that if I stay open to it, I'll know it when I see it.
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I'm really disheartened to see what I think is a near abondonment of the Gulf Coast, and of New Orleans in particular. I know that hurricanes happen every year and every year the nation tires of hearing about the mess left behind, after a while, but this is very, very different. The catastrophe in New Orleans, the great national shame, isn't what Katrina did or even what the man-made flood that followed her did, but rather what is happening now, the abandonment. Pick a blog in my New Orleans Links. There are some new ones. You will always find something beautifully insightful at The Wetbank Guide or People Get Ready, Flood and Loathing or Tim's Nameless Blog. I have recently added Suspect Device, Ernie the Attorney, and Ray in Austin. They all provide first hand insights and wonderful links to the local media and the story as it looks from there. I will confess finally, though, that I have blog envy. I've decided that I think Editor B has the most beautiful blog I've ever seen, my blog ideal, in terms of design. It's simple enough to let the content do the shining, but the added device of pictures, lots and lots of pictures, some of them in extreme close up, of his friends and his family and his city, New Orleans, as an ever-changing landscape in his header, blows me away.
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Peace, out, ya'll.
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