Hear Me in the Harmony

A hotdog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.
— Humphrey Bogart

Last night my friend Tigers Fan and I headed up to Baltimore to see his hometown Detroit Tigers take on the Baltimore Orioles. I was psyched, because I’d never been to Camden Yards for a baseball game,* despite having gone to college in Baltimore and having lived there after graduation. Also because, as you might have heard me say once or twice, I love baseball and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be on a summer night than at the ballpark.

We left NoVa around 5, which was a mistake, because then we sat in traffic for a hundred years and only made it to the stadium about 20 minutes before game time. But since it was my first time there, we walked around a bit first, and this is what I saw:

This is the warehouse that sits behind right field. It’s iconic in Baltimore, and it makes me happy.

Between the warehouse and right field is a promenade, with lots of concessions and stuff.  Here, apparently, you have to be careful you don’t get knocked on the head by a home run!  In fact, there are plaques spotted all over the sidewalk in the shape of baseballs with dates and names of the players who hit home runs out there.  I wish I’d taken a picture of one.  Only one person – Ken Griffey, Jr. – has ever hit a ball that actually hit the warehouse.

This was my first glimpse of the field.  I’m kind of short, but Tigers Fan is nearly a foot taller than I am, so he could see significantly more from this vantage point than I could.  He said, “There appear to be some people in period garb down there.”  And, indeed, there were:

More specifically, they were the Yorktown Fife and Drum Corp, and they performed the National Anthem.

Then we headed to our seats.  Baseball tickets are one thing I don’t mind spending money on, and they’re cheaper at Camden Yards than they are at Nationals Park.  We had club level seats, which is code for “fancy.”

So fancy that you don’t even have to go get your own food and beer if you don’t want – they bring it right to you!  (And now that I say it like that, I realize they’ll do that for you in the cheap seats too – the beer vendors and hot dog guys – but this was way better: you just wave your orange menu and someone comes and takes your order – and there’s lots to choose from – and then they go and get it for you and bring it back.  How cool is that?)

Here’s the view from our (larger than average, comfy) seats:

The game itself was exciting – several home runs and lead changes and a near come-from-behind win for the Os in the bottom of the 9th, but in the end, the Tigers held on to win 6-5, and Tigers Fan was a happy guy.

* I have been to Camden Yards before – in fact, I’ve been in the Os dugout and on the field and all around the inside of the stadium.  In college, we had one of our formals there, and we got to go on tours of the park. But this was better.  Way better.

I really don’t think I need buns of steel. I’d be happy with buns of cinnamon.
— Ellen DeGeneres

I work out regularly – running, walking, elliptical, and now, with summer, swimming. I work out 5-6 days a week usually, and generally do upper body weights three times a week. My arms look pretty good these days, if I do say so myself. I realized I was neglecting my lower body and abs, though, because I hate the exercises and was only doing them once a week (abs) if ever (legs). Lately, though, it’s become clear to me that I need to do something extra to change my shape, so a couple of weeks ago, I ordered Jackie Warner’s One-on-One Training with Jackie DVD. I’ve never watched her show on Bravo, but I’d heard good things about her DVD, and I haven’t been disappointed.

The DVD has three separate 20-minute workouts – upper body, lower body, and core. I bought it with the intention of doing the whole video as one workout, but it turns out that might kill me, so I’ve taken to doing each part once a week, before or after another piece of my workout (running, swimming, etc), and still doing upper body weights at the gym once a week. Jackie combines strength training with one-minute cardio intervals, and each strength exercise is done for about a minute as well, which is a nice way to keep things moving. The total length of each workout is perfect too – just when I think I can’t do any more, the 20 minutes is up. I still can’t do all of the exercises for the entire time she does (well, not her, because she’s busy “checking the form” of her companions, who do the majority of the work), but hey – baby steps.

She has four of her trainers from her health club along with her, and each one is featured for a segment in each workout. The three girls are all big-busted and tan, and half-naked, of course (I think it’s supposed to motivate you, but I get distracted wondering how they don’t fall out of their skimpy tops) and I just know their six-packs have been given added definition via airbrushing, though I can’t prove it. The lone guy keeps his baseball hat pulled low over his eyes and doesn’t smile much. He is also fully clothed. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Jackie is a lesbian. But I digress.

For the ab workout, the male trainer demonstrates the more advanced versions of the exercises, and one of the girls demonstrates the lower impact versions, which is a nice touch. Jackie regularly reminds you to focus on your form, which I need, because I tend to get lazy as I get toward the end of an exercise. She’s encouraging, but not overly chipper, and she explains things in a way that’s easy to understand. Overall, I’m very happy with the workout I get, but I wonder if I’m doing the ab exercises wrong because, although they hurt like a mother while I’m doing them, I’m never sore the next day (and maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know). The upper body workout reaches areas I’ve apparently neglected in my own arm workouts, especially the back (all you’ll need is hand weights). The first time I did the lower body workout, I nearly fell walking down the stairs of my apartment afterwards because my thighs felt like jelly. In a good way.

Anyway, it’s cheap on Amazon – $9, plus shipping (I think I paid $12 total), and it’s a fun, interesting way to spice up your workout life, if you need something to kick start you or motivate you to keep going. I’m enjoying it, so I wanted to share it with you. If you check it out, let me know what you think!

None pities him that is in the snare who, warned before, would not beware.
— Robert Herrick

I’ve been sitting here every day this week, staring at my site, wondering what there is to say. I feel empty, like there’s nothing to share. There are things I could tell you, of course, but even I’m tired of the ongoing saga of Pub Crawl Boy. I know now that it isn’t me, and he asked if I still want to talk to him – I do, but I sure wish he’d act like he still wants to talk to me.

I don’t think I’m cut out for dating. I’m not confident enough not to be hurt by every jackass who looks my way and says nice things. But what’s the alternative? I’m not ready to accept that I might have to live the rest of my life alone and that it would be ok, as someone recently suggested to me (not that she thinks I might really end up alone, only that I should learn to be ok with the possibility, just in case). The picture I have in my head of my life includes a husband and children and PTA meetings and softball games and summer vacations with my brother’s family and watching my kids and Aimee’s kids grow up as friends. And I feel in a hurry to get there, for a lot of different reasons.

When I lost my hearing, my life literally got put on hold for nearly three years while I tried to figure out what had happened and come to terms with it. If it hadn’t happened, I really feel like I’d already be where I want to be personally, and so it’s hard not to feel cheated a little bit, and it’s hard not to feel like I have to play catch-up. The other thing that happened when I lost my hearing is that I lost a lot of my sense of self and my confidence, which I’m only just now starting to get back, and that makes it harder now to put myself out there to try and get what I want. I feel stuck – too afraid on the one hand and too desperate on the other. Most days I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s amazing to me that I even bother to get out of bed sometimes.

Whatever. I suppose I’m just having a little pity party for myself while I wait for PCB to pop back up out of the woodwork and say the magic words to make me think THIS is really going to be the week. Again. I’m hopeless.

Disclaimer: I initially posted this Saturday afternoon. I took it down after continuing developments occurred Saturday night that show that I was hasty in my assessment – again – but I decided to put it back up because it’s still the way I was feeling when I wrote it, and I’m interested in people’s thoughts on the subject.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hates a man for being her friend.
— Alexander Pope

When you know there’s someone out there in the world who digs you, who thinks you’re smart and funny and cute, who wants to be with you, you feel different. You walk taller, smile more, have a little spring in your step. At least I do. It’s a kind of validation, whether you agree with the concept or not, that you’re desirable, and it makes you feel good, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

But what happens when the bottom falls out, when – for no discernible reason – he doesn’t call, and when you call him, he appears to blow you off? You know in your head that it can’t be you, because you haven’t done anything: you’re the same girl you were the night you met him, and the day he arranged to have drinks, and the day he had to cancel and seemed disappointed about it.

I don’t know about you, but when that happens to me, it’s a constant struggle to keep my head up. I feel sad, of course, and disappointed. But I also feel embarrassed to talk about what happened, like I was foolish to ever believe that he would want to be with me and everyone else knew it and didn’t say anything. I know that’s ridiculous, and I thought long and hard about whether embarrassed was really what I felt, and decided that it is.

I could still be wrong about him, I suppose. I could be overanalyzing his last email – terse, not so friendly as the others, very matter-of-fact – telling me he couldn’t meet for drinks Thursday because he was heading out of town for the weekend. But there was no, “Sorry I haven’t been in touch [even though I’m the one who said ‘I hope next week will work’],” no, “Let’s try again next week” like he’s said before.

I assume, then, that I’m supposed to take the hint and understand that he’s done with me, but if that’s the case, I feel cheated. I feel like he owes me an explanation about what changed between last week and this week. I know I’m in the minority on this – more than one person has told me that, although it would be good manners for him to explain, he doesn’t “owe” me anything – and I’m certainly not going to send him an email asking why, but this makes me mad. I trusted the things he said to me, which isn’t easy for me, instead of listening to the little voice in the back of my head that said “Don’t get caught up in this.” And there you go.

You know what the sad thing is, though? This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to me, and I never seem to learn how not to jump in head first, how not to get my hopes up, how to keep my expectations low. And I probably will not learn anything from this, either, quite frankly. But like my friend says, “It’s going to be wrong a lot, and it’s only going to be right once. Luckily, it only has to be right once.”