Soccer Star

Soccer practices starts March 28th, so we're heavy into pre-season training. He's on the pink team and he was a first-round draft pick. We have not told him about the cleats yet. No need to get him more excited than he already is about this unbelievable opportunity.

In other news, I'm still sick.

But back at the ranch, the worker guys are building Tier One-Phase One of the vegetable garden:

It's going to be a three-tiered affair when it's all said and done.

Too bad I'll probably still be sick and won't be able to enjoy any of it.

This week we purchased "summer is coming" necessities: two lawnmowers (one for each worker guy), a set of patio furniture, and some tools.

Too bad I am too sick to sit in the new lounge chair or dig with the new shovel.

I have had the opportunity to channel my angst creatively, however. As some of you know, I decided it would be a good idea to take a creative writing class this semester (thank goodness they let me switch to audit status), and so while I was laid up, I used the quiet time to complete my most recent assignment: Write a poem, any style, any topic, that is 16 lines or more. Here's what I came up with:

Antibiotics
By Kimberly Becker

An awful antibiotic
An amiable answer
An actual amalgamation
Of killers.
In. My. Body.

Anti = against
Bio = life

I willfully swallowed those things!

And while they were in there wrestling with the microbial demons living in my bronchials and sinuses
(“And Attitude” my husband adds),
I was feeling so sorry for myself, for my poor, poor self, sick in bed, neither at work nor at yoga
(“Nor playing with your son” my mother-instinct adds).

Then I picked up a story
about women in Afganistan
having C-sections
with no anesthesia.

I feel better now.
And it’s not the antibiotics.

A couple of people in my class actually wrote villanelles, but I prefer free verse.

And that's The End.

OUS&B,

The Sick One