Guys Talkin’ Sports
Today had a really nice treat: Patrick was able to come in for a solo visit, which we’ve not been able to do before. Visiting at my Aunt Mary’s house for a sleep-over last night, he wanted to stay up for the AS Roma v AC Milan football match. The image of him fast asleep on the couch before the match ended is really cute. During his visit here, he enjoyed talking about both the professionals and his own Saturday morning match. Combined with talking about Legos and other things, I got a great bit of time watching the enthusiastic smiles come up on his face.
Separately, Elana and I were able to spend time together talking and enjoying being together. This whole thing about spending time apart is still foreign to us, even having suffered through it for two months. That time makes it difficult to process all the rest of this sometimes.
The help from close friends and family really can make a difference, even in the face of the incredible strain and stress of life. You know words of thanks aren’t really going to express the gratitude you feel, but you try to say it anyway and hope they hear what you’re trying to say.
Guys talkin’ medicine
Today there were three male nurses and one female nurse working on the ward. Sure defeats any and all stereotypes I had of nurses being mostly done by women. Sure, it’s undoubtedly still a majority, but I also expect a hospital in Dublin, Ireland is an interesting place to look for trends. (Not #nurse trends, you Twitter addicts.)
Guys knittin’ to the spoken word
I think I need to make a lot more progress on my knitting before I try to actually do it while listening to the spoken word. It’s not disruptive—it’s more of a question of where my attention should be. If I’m paying attention to the knitting, I find it really hard to actually process the words I’m listening to with headphones. (This is true for me in general, though—I can’t listen to two people talk at once, either.) Which means when I knit and listen to a football match which is on the TV, I’m not really hearing it.
That is, until the commentators all make an audible increase in adrenaline. I pause my knitting and see what big impressive play is on the screen—which in European football/soccer usually means the play ends up not happening, but it’s always close. The low scores of football matches over here, and those of the professional soccer teams in the US, must drive a large portion of the US audience nuts.
So I’m going to use the book-on-CD of Neal Stephenson’s novel Anathem as a different source of relaxation, and try again later to mix it with knitting. Right now, each pleasure deserves its own time and its own focus.
