The Box's Resolve

I had hoped to write a different story this morning, but we came up short in our much anticipated rematch against the team that knocked us out of last season's playoffs and went on to win the Spring League. However, not without some drama!

Yesterday was a beautiful day for kickball. I parked in a handicap spot and click clacked my way over to the field. Jennie and Brendan helped me with my chair and crutches while I shimmied down that hill. We watched Menance and Ballhawks play and listened to Ballhawks's terrible music. The sun was shining. The weather was sweet. Like everything else it made me want to move my dancing feet.  Oh wait, that's Bob Marley, and not what Ballhawks were playing. I'll just leave it at that. We assembled and were ready for our rematch against There's No Crying In Kickball.

I lost the rock paper scissors to Anthony as he did not respect Craig's authoritah. His regular catcher Pat wasn't there so he took over catching duties and left the pitching to Muscles. Flash backing to when we lost in Spring to this team, I was mighty impressed Anthony's arm didn't fall off when he pitched 19 innings to lead his team to a Spring League victory. I would have liked to win Spring of course, but I wasn't sad that I didn't pitch 19 that day.

Anyway, we lead off the game but didn't put anything on the board. They scored 1 in the bottom of the first. Craig had told me earlier in the week that his shoulder didn't feel right after his Tuesday night game. He didn't look too comfortable out there but wanted the ball in his hands. Know the feeling. The second inning went scoreless as Jesse rolled it in there nice and tight.

We broke through in the top of the 3rd as Dave crossed the plate on a Mike Silver RBI. Cool, tie game. In the bottom of the third the wheels fell off our wagon. The walls of our pool collapsed. The tetris pieces came too fast. The grinds got all up in the fresh coffee. The blue screen of death shut your computer down before you could save your term paper. The phone stopped charging. Craig walked a couple girls and was clearly struggling with his shoulder. Crying started scoring runs. We got risky in the field on a play where the ball dropped into left center and then our defense started throwing the ball around, allowing baserunners to advance even further. Things got a bit ugly there. We managed to scrape out a few outs but the damage was done. Crying put up 5 and now we were down 6-1. Craig's day pitching was done as he was clearly in pain.

"Don't take my picture" - Craig

The next two innings went scoreless thanks to great defense and great pitching from Jesse. It's great to have Jesse back. We got on base a couple times but weren't able to get one across the plate. We had to take an automatic out at the end of our lineup due to only having three girls (you need four).

Ercan makes a great play! And she's out!

Sarah R lead off the top of the sixth and got on base. Steve got on base after. Craig popped out. Alex got on and pushed Sarah across home. Ercan got on and Steve scored. Still only 1 out but now we are only down 6-3. Jimmy sacrificed allowing Alex to score. 6-4, 2 outs. Dave safely reached base. Jay safely reached base. Mike Dengler safely reached base and Ercan scored. 6-5! Oh right, Jay and Dengler both got walked as Muscles started having issues finding the strike zone. When Dengler got walked, which allowed a run, Muscles got super pissed about the ball calls at Rob (Menace) who was reffing. I guess that was the drama part I promised. Anthony took over pitching and got Silver to pop out ending the game and securing the Crying win. We shook hands and congratulated them on their victory.

Afterward, many of us went to Cafe to hang for a bit. Thanks Steph for driving me to the door (and back to my car after!). It was super great to hang for a bit. Cafe was crutchable enough. Topics of conversation included, rotated, and weren't limited to things like Fall league, Box Soccer team, Chris wanting another blog post, how close we came in our game today and how much we wanted to win that one, Jay being all sad faced, dirtyness and the lack of dirtyness, knee machines, apple being the devil, fried green beans, when the next party is going to be, who are we playing next week, and a bunch of other things. Harrison even joined us for a bit. It was great to hang for a bit!

The Box!

That's all I got. We showed resolve. We can come back from being down. We've got the undefeated Wham Bam next week so that should be interesting. It still sucks not being able to play but being able to hang with my friends makes it manageable.

I managed to log 2 miles on the fitbit yesterday and that seemed like an accomplishment, even though 5-8 used to be the normal. This is the new normal. Other than this kickball recap the week went fine. Had a couple far away meetings but I'm getting a little more used to dragging myself around. We're going camping this weekend so that should be interesting. And I've got that follow up appointment Monday morning which is all I've been waiting for since getting the MRI done on the 3rd.

At this point, I just want to have a game plan so I can start attacking this. This will get tougher before it gets easier. That's my expectation. Sooner I get there, the sooner I can get past.

Thanks for checking in. I know everything doesn't revolve around me. But inside my giant head, to me, this is all a pretty drastic thing. I expect to have to click clack crutch for several more weeks but I can't wait until the day comes where I don't have to. Obviously.  Someday that day will come, until then, you'll hear me coming from a ways away. In my case at least, the thunder comes before the lightning.

Have a great weekend! Let's hang out again real soon!